The purpose of this Research and Policy Brief is to provide state and local policymakers with a comprehensive understanding of the measures used in teacher evaluation--their strengths, limitations, and current use in policy and practice. This brief will underscore aspects of evaluation policies currently aligned with best practices as well as…

The purpose of this study is to determine online self-regulated learning levels of students by adapting "Online Self-Regulated Learning Scale" designed by Barnard and his colleagues into Turkish. Present study, irrespective of being a scale analysis, is at the same time a qualitative research. It is executed via scan model. Study group…

This manual contains information about the American College Test (ACT) Plan® program. The principal focus of this manual is to document the Plan program's technical adequacy in light of its intended purposes. This manual supersedes the 2011 edition. The content of this manual responds to requirements of the testing industry as established in the…

This study examined the second language (L2) development of adult learners of Spanish at three levels of proficiency during and after a semester of instruction. A fundamental goal was to identify cognitive and psychosocial individual differences (IDs) that can explain between-learner variation over time in order to expand our understanding of the…

Cut scores are used in a variety of circumstances to aid in decision making through the establishment of a clear cut line between adjacent categories. Community colleges regularly use cut scores on placement tests to decide the appropriate course for each beginning student: the first college-level course or a developmental course, depending on…

The psychometric considerations and challenges associated with including constructed response items on tests are discussed along with how these issues affect the form assembly specifications for mixed-format exams. Reliability and validity, security and fairness, pretesting, content and skills coverage, test length and timing, weights, statistical…

Background: Workplace-based learning is a critical component of professional preparation in speech pathology. A validated assessment of this learning is seen to be "the gold standard", but it is difficult to develop because of design and validation issues. These issues include the role and nature of judgement in assessment, challenges in…

Extended time is one of the most common testing accommodations provided to students with disabilities. It is also controversial; critics of extended time accommodations argue that extended time is used too readily, without concern for how it changes the skills measured by tests, leading to scores that cannot be compared fairly with those of other…

Schools and districts should use a well-designed needs assessment to inform important decisions about a range of technology program areas. Presently, there is a lack of valid and reliable instruments available and accessible to schools to effectively assess their educational needs to better design and evaluate their projects and initiatives. The…

Rating scales developed to measure child emotional and behavioral problems typically are so long as to make their use in progress monitoring impractical in typical school settings. This study examined two methods of selecting items from existing rating scales to create shorter instruments for use in assessing response to intervention. The…

Aim: To study the value and reliability of an examination of neurological soft-signs, often used in Sweden, in the assessment of children with attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), by examining children with and without ADHD, as diagnosed by an experienced clinician using the DSM-III-R. Method: We have examined interrater reliability…

Presented at the national conference for the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in April 2009. This study examined the utility of scores on the SAT writing test, specifically examining the reliability of scores using generalizability and item response theories. The study also provides an overview of current predictive validity…

We investigated the psychometric validity and reliability of the Suicide Status Form-II (SSF-II) developed by Jobes, Jacoby, Cimbolic, and Hustead (1997). Participants were 149 psychiatric inpatients (108 suicidal; 41 nonsuicidal) at the Mayo Clinic. Each participant completed assessment measures within 24 hours of admission and 48-72 hours later.…

The influence of metacognition on learning and problem solving has been demonstrated, and it is becoming increasingly clear that promoting metacognitive activity can produce substantial improvements in problem solving and learning in chemistry. This article reports the development and validation of an instrument designed to evaluate students'…

The Chinese Perceived Causes of Poverty Scale (CPCPS) was constructed to assess Chinese people's beliefs about poverty. Four categories of explanations of poverty are covered in this scale: personal problems of poor people, lack of opportunities to escape from poverty, exploitation of poor people, and bad fate. Based on the responses of 1,519…