Data-based decision-making has been a frequently used policy and practice intervention used in schools to help inform the decision-making processes of educational practitioners, with the aim of improving student outcomes. Interim benchmark assessments are designed by commercial test developers to support educators in this framework. In fact, the…

Psycholinguistics is the research of language in the mind: The architecture of storing the different components of language in our memory, and the ways we access that knowledge when processing and producing language. Psycholinguists usually conduct quantitative experimental research in which certain standards of experimental design, data…

In the contemporary era, the landscape of innovation and entrepreneurship is dynamically evolving, fueled by a substantial surge in venture capital investments and the rapid expansion of the global startup ecosystem. This burgeoning growth not only highlights the vibrant nature of modern economies but also brings to the forefront the critical…

Digitally-based assessments create opportunities for collecting moment to moment information about how students are responding to assessment items. This information, called log or process data, has long been regarded as a vast and valuable source of data about student performance. Despite repeated assurances of its vastness and value, process data…

In an increasingly data-driven society, making decisions with data is a requirement not only for research scientists but also for navigating life more generally (Kjelvik & Schultheis, 2019). An informed citizenry must be prepared to discover patterns, predict outcomes, make decisions with data, and evaluate data-based claims for legitimacy and…

For the first time in 32 years, the national average scale score in mathematics dropped by seven points across the country in grades four and eight, according to the latest results of the National Assessment on Educational Progress (NAEP). The 2022 results in mathematics were staggering, in which "math performance fell for the first time in…

This dissertation advances research on evaluation (RoE) through a trio of studies focusing on the role of context and the innovative use of Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software in formative evaluation in a qualitative research project. The first article extends Coryn et al. (2017) and elucidates how various contextual…

While utilizing assessment data has been a pervasive practice in educational reform for decades, and teachers are expected to use assessment data to improve instruction, little is known about how the practice of requiring teachers to review test data affects their perception of effectiveness in addressing the learning gaps of student groups. This…

The purpose of this study was to explore how evaluators justify using story-based methodologies when examining causality. The two primary research questions of the study included: 1) what arguments are made by evaluators to justify the credibility of story-based causal methodologies to evaluation stakeholders; and 2) from the perspective of…

Purpose: The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the feasibility of using tests of robustness in peer review. This study involved selecting three high-impact papers which featured open data and utilized bioinformatic analyses but provided no source code and refactoring these to allow external survey participants to swap tools,…

For the first time in 32 years, the national average scale score in mathematics dropped by seven points across the country in grades four and eight, according to the latest results of the National Assessment on Educational Progress (NAEP). The 2022 results in mathematics were staggering, in which "math performance fell for the first time in…

U.S. middle school teachers have struggled to meet the instructional needs of students in the area of mathematics. Teachers' approaches to assessment and instructional strategies remain understudied; such knowledge could help educational leaders to devise strategies to boost student achievement. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine…

Monte Carlo methods are an accepted methodology in regards to generation critical values for a Maximum test. The same methods are also applicable to the evaluation of the robustness of the new created test. A table of critical values was created, and the robustness of the new maximum test was evaluated for five different distributions. Robustness…

The purpose of this dissertation was to validate scores for a new survey tool, The Virtual Learning Assessment. This 53-item measure was designed with the intent that if scores are validated it could provide a means in which student-teacher relationships and the attributes that enhance those relationships in a remote setting could be assessed. To…

The world has experienced rapid changes, leading to pressing issues such as environmental degradation, social inequality, and resource depletion. As a transdisciplinary field, evaluation has emerged as a crucial tool in addressing these challenges and promoting systemic change. However, concerns have been raised regarding the field's capacity to…