Assessing students' (mis)conceptions is a challenging task for teachers as well as for researchers. While individual assessment, for example through interviews, can provide deep insights into students' thinking, this is very time-consuming and therefore not feasible for whole classes or even larger settings. For those settings, automatically…

This research is a developmental research aiming at developing a good mathematical test instrument using polytomous responses based on classical and modern theories. This research design uses the Plomp model, which consists of five stages, (1) preliminary investigation, (2) design, (3) realization/construction, (4) revision, and (5) implementation…

Large-scale standardized tests are regularly used to measure student achievement overall and for student subgroups. These uses assume tests provide comparable measures of outcomes across student subgroups, but prior research suggests score comparisons across gender groups may be complicated by the type of test items used. This paper presents…

Foundation of quality examination is based on the key features of validity and reliability of question papers. Question papers of examination boards in Pakistan--usually these features as contents of a question paper--are written by a single paper setter. To address these issues, Federal Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (FBISE)…

This study describes the characteristics of the test and its items used in the national-standardized school examination by applying classical test theory and focusing on the item difficulty, item discrimination, test reliability, and distractor analysis. We analyzed response data of 191 12th graders from one of public senior high schools in…

In this article, we discuss the development and the administration of a multiple-choice test, which we named "Test of Calculus and Vectors in Mathematics and Physics" (TCV-MP), aimed at comparing students' ability to answer questions on derivatives, integrals, and vectors in a purely mathematical context and in the context of physics.…

Inquiry-oriented teaching is a specific form of active learning gaining popularity in teaching communities. The goal of inquiry-oriented classes is to help students in gaining a conceptual understanding of the material. My research focus is to gauge students' performance and conceptual understanding in inquiry-oriented linear algebra classes. This…

Cognitive Diagnostic Assessment (CDA) is an alternative assessment which can give a clear picture of pupils' learning process and cognitive structures to education stakeholders so that appropriate instructional strategies can be designed to tailored pupils' needs. Coincide with this function, the Ordered Multiple-Choice (OMC) items were…

The National Benchmark Test Project (NBTP) was commissioned by Higher Education South Africa in 2005 to assess the academic proficiency of prospective students. The competencies assessed include quantitative literacy using the NBTP QL test. This instrument is a criterion-referenced multiple-choice test developed collaboratively by South African…

In response to concerns about using only standardized multiple-choice assessments, some school districts have moved to using alternative ratings of student achievement with authentic assessments. However, such assessments are often limited in terms of the psychometric validity data supporting their use. The present study mixed quantitative and…

This study reports on the development, validation, and administration of a 48-item multiple-choice test to assess students' representational fluency of linear functions in a physics context (1D kinematics) and a mathematics context. The test includes three external representations: graphs, tables, and formulas, which result in six possible…

Learning or performance gains are often measured in improvements of test scores over time. However, learners may also answer questions incorrectly which they appeared to master previously, making claims about overall learning gains problematic. Using data from 1,211 grade 6 learners in the Umgungundlovu district in KwaZulu-Natal, we interrogated…

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the validity of using bilingual test to measure the mathematics achievement of students who have limited English proficiency (LEP). The bilingual test and the English-only test consist of 20 computation and 20 word problem multiple-choice questions (from TIMSS 2003 and 2007 released items. The bilingual test…

Significant momentum exists for next-generation assessments to increasingly utilize technology to develop and deliver performance-based assessments. Many traditional challenges with this assessment approach still apply, including psychometric concerns related to performance-based tasks (PBTs), which include low reliability, efficiency of…

This study compared the performance of students with and without learning disabilities (LD) on a mathematics test using a standard administration procedure and a read-aloud accommodation. Analyses were conducted on the test scores of 625 middle and high school students (n = 388 with LD) on two equivalent 30-item multiple-choice tests. Whereas mean…