This research brief summarizes hybrid survey findings about the Illinois child welfare workforce in three key areas: (1) the demographic characteristics and professional experiences of child welfare workers, (2) the emotional responses of workers to their jobs, as reflected in the language patterns of their survey comments, and (3) the needs and…

In order to reach valid and reliable test scores, various test theories have been developed, and one of them is nonparametric item response theory (NIRT). Mokken Models are the most widely known NIRT models which are useful for small samples and short tests. Mokken Package is useful for Mokken Scale Analysis. An important issue about validity is…

Insufficient effort responding (IER) affects many forms of assessment in both educational and psychological contexts. Much research has examined different types of IER, IER's impact on the psychometric properties of test scores, and preprocessing procedures used to detect IER. However, there is a gap in the literature in terms of practical advice…

As an important instructional affordance, teacher written feedback is widely used in second language (L2) writing contexts. While copious evidence has shown that such a pedagogical practice can facilitate L2 learners' writing performance, especially their writing accuracy, little is known about how novice writing teachers conceptualize and enact…

This qualitative study explores the perceptions and conceptions of academic writing among 14 ELT students in an English medium instruction (EMI) context at an international university in Northern Cyprus, an under-researched setting. The study revealed that participants faced a variety of challenges and employed strategic approaches that created…

Some statewide testing programs allow students to receive corrective feedback and revise their answers during testing. Despite its pedagogical benefits, the effects of providing revision opportunities remain unknown in the context of alternate assessments. Therefore, this study examined student data from a large-scale alternate assessment that…

Item response theory (IRT) models typically rely on a normality assumption for subject-specific latent traits, which is often unrealistic in practice. Semiparametric extensions based on Dirichlet process mixtures (DPMs) offer a more flexible representation of the unknown distribution of the latent trait. However, the use of such models in the IRT…

Technology-mediated interviews are a promising supplement to in-person interviews for questioning eyewitnesses. We sought to develop and test a virtual self-administered memory-elicitation procedure--The Virtual Memory Assistance Tool (VMAT). The VMAT is a web-based memory retrieval tool designed around the principles of the Cognitive Interview.…

Attending to emotion in science classrooms can expand the range of resources valued for science learning, and it can offer insights into students' investigations. However, research that characterizes emotion as a part of disciplinary science learning is relatively nascent. In response, we explore the dynamic relationships between feelings,…

Assessing the time course under which underlying memory representations can be formed is an important question for understanding memory. Several studies assessing item memory have shown that gist representations of items are laid out more rapidly than verbatim representations. However, for associations among items/components, which form the core…

In this study, we investigated whether a colourful design would foster the aesthetic appreciation of Chinese classic poetry, and the role of learners' empathy trait in this process. Middle school students (N = 159) were assigned to one of four conditions in a 2 (Colour Design: Colourful vs. Grayscale) × 2 (Empathy Trait: High vs. Low)…

Psychometricians have devoted much research and attention to categorical item responses, leading to the development and widespread use of item response theory for the estimation of model parameters and identification of items that do not perform in the same way for examinees from different population subgroups (e.g., differential item functioning…

In most higher education institutions, course evaluations are conducted at the end of the term. While many instructors implement a feedback system such as a questionnaire or poll at the midterm point, we propose that having students use an arts-based representation (i.e. memes) for a feedback channel can help students and the course instructor to…

The aim of this study was to examine the emotional semantic orientation of gifted students towards the flipped learning model (FLM). An explanatory sequential design, one of the mixed research methods, was utilized in this research. Participants were 53 gifted students, who continued their education in a Science and Art Center in the Eastern…

Purpose: The present brain--behavior study examined whether sensory registration or neural inhibition processes explained variability in the behavioral most comfortable level (MCL) and background noise level (BNL) components of the acceptable noise level (ANL) measure. Method: A traditional auditory gating paradigm was used to evoke neural…