The IEA's International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) investigates the ways in which young people are prepared to undertake their roles as citizens in a range of countries in the second decade of the 21st century. ICCS 2016 is the second cycle of a study initiated in 2009. The ICCS 2016 user guide describes the content and format of…

This supplement describes national adaptations made to the international version of the TIMSS 2011 background questionnaires. This information provides users with a guide to evaluate the availability of internationally comparable data for use in secondary analyses involving the TIMSS 2011 background variables. Background questionnaire adaptations…

Although millions of dollars and weeks of instructional time are spent nationally on testing students, educators often have little information on how to choose appropriate assessments of adolescent reading for informing instruction. This guide is designed to meet that need, by drawing together evidence about nine of the most commonly-used,…

Statistical neighbour models provide one method for benchmarking progress. For each local authority (LA), these models designate a number of other LAs deemed to have similar characteristics. These designated LAs are known as statistical neighbours. Any LA may compare its performance (as measured by various indicators) against its statistical…

This is a book about quality and how to control quality through deliberate actions on the part of the professionals developing and implementing the instances of instruction available at an organization. Quality control theory favors no particular learning philosophy and is only directed towards aspects of how, what, where and when measurements are…

Brennan's B statistic is a generalized upper-lower discrimination index which was first published in 1972: Peirce earlier introduced a statistic on the relation between a predictor and an outcome which has the same structure as Brennan's B. (Author/CP)

An alternative derivation was given of Gaylord's formulas showing the relationships among the average item intercorrelation, the average item-test correlation, and test reliability. Certain parallels were also noted in analysis of variance and principal component analysis. (Author)

This is a user's guide to the Student-Problem Package (SPP), a software package for the IBM-PC that provides three sub-programs for analyzing item response patterns. These analyses are based on student-problem (S-P) curve theory. The SPP User's Guide provides: (1) a brief introduction to response pattern analysis; (2) an overview of the…

This paper examines the properties of the Item Efficiency Index proposed by Neill and Jackson (1976; EJ 137 077) for minimum redundancy item analysis. (Author/BW)

Mathematical and statistical relationships between factor analysis and smallest space analysis are discussed. As spatial analysis of correlation matrices, factor analysis is a special case of smallest space analysis. The two differ in six ways: Shepard diagram, dimensionality, correction for communality, similarity coefficients, regions versus…

Lists and discusses 17 "do" and 8 "don't" guidelines for educators and trainers to consider when designing data collection questionnaires. (MF)

Two procedures for the display of item analysis statistics are described. One procedure allows for investigation of difficulty; the second plots item difficulty against item discrimination. (Author/JKS)

The article reviews error analysis procedures for two subtests of the Peabody Individual Achievement Test (reading recognition and reading comprehension). Suggestions are offered for composing and interpreting a pattern of errors on items from each subtest. (CL)

In many personality and interest inventories, a score profile, rather than a single score, is attributed to each subject. Six applicable criteria are suggested for use in examining the adequacy of items in such inventories. These criteria relate to the items' response distributions, internal consistency, and discriminative value. (Author/BW)

Describes a practical approach that teachers can use to check for test-item validity in test construction. The Kuder-Richardson Reliability Formula is used. Detailed instructions describe the procedure for evaluating items for difficulty and using statistical methods to determine test validity. (AM)