Fairness, an essential quality of a test, has been broadly defined as equitable treatment of all test-takers during the testing process, absence of measurement bias, equitable access to the constructs being measured, and justifiable validity of test score interpretation for the intended purpose(s) (AREA, APA, & NCME, 2014). Given that test…

The number of malicious files present in the public domain continues to rise at a substantial rate. Current anti-malware software utilizes a signature-based method to detect the presence of malicious software. Generating these pattern signatures is time consuming due to malicious code complexity and the need for expert analysis, however, by making…

This study examined the convergent validity of the "Supports Intensity Scale-Adult Version" (SIS-A; Thompson et al., 2015a) and "Supports Intensity Scale-Children's Version" (SIS-C; Thompson et al., 2016a). Data from SISOnline (n = 129,864) for the SIS-A and from the SIS-C standardization sample (n = 4,015) were used for…

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute has released a report, "Evaluating the Content and Quality of Next Generation Assessments," ostensibly an evaluative comparison of four testing programs, the Common Core derived SBAC and PARCC, ACT's Aspire, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' MCAS. Of course, anyone familiar with Fordham's past work…

In recent years, substantial improvements were obtained in the effectiveness of data driven algorithms to validate the mapping of items to skills, or the Q-matrix. In the current study we use ensemble algorithms on top of existing Q-matrix refinement algorithms to improve their performance. We combine the boosting technique with a decision tree.…

Background: The assessment of intervention integrity is essential in psychotherapeutic intervention outcome research and psychotherapist training. There has been little attention given to it in mindfulness-based interventions research, training programs, and practice. Aims: To address this, the Mindfulness-Based Interventions: Teaching Assessment…

To efficiently assess multiple psychological constructs and to minimize the burden on respondents, psychologists increasingly use shortened versions of existing tests. However, compared to the longer test, a shorter test version may have a substantial impact on the reliability and the validity of the test scores in psychological research and…

The elicited imitation task (EIT), in which language learners listen to a series of spoken sentences and repeat each one verbatim, is a commonly used measure of language proficiency in second language acquisition research. The "TOEFL® Essentials"™ test includes an EIT as a holistic measure of speaking proficiency, referred to as the…

The increasing attention on Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) pronunciation instruction gives us an opportunity to look into the current directions of teaching CFL and the specific instructional pronunciation strategies employed by CFL teachers. This paper offers a review of empirical evidence on the use and impact of instructional pronunciation…

Child maltreatment (CM) is a serious and prevalent public health problem in the United States (U.S.) yet programming to combat the issue often overlooks high school aged youth (those aged 14-17). In 2017, over 90,000 youth in the U.S. experienced CM during their high school years (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2019). This manuscript…

The instructions in this manual explain the responsibilities of school administrators for the New York State Testing Program (NYSTP) Grades 3-8 English Language Arts and Mathematics Tests. School administrators must be thoroughly familiar with the contents of the manual, and the policies and procedures must be followed as written so that testing…

Background: Middle school students use the information conveyed by morphemes (i.e., units of meaning such as prefixes, root words and suffixes) in different ways to support their literacy endeavours, suggesting the likelihood that morphological knowledge is multidimensional. This has important implications for assessment. Methods: The current…

The District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) has prioritized efforts to support students' social and emotional learning (SEL) competencies, such as perseverance and social awareness. To measure students' SEL competencies and the school experiences that promote SEL competencies (school climate), DCPS began administering annual surveys to…

Economics affects us no matter what role we play in social life. Its foundation as a science was laid by the studies of Adam Smith, and since history it has become one of the disciplines accepted in university curriculums. Scarcity, opportunity costs and abandoning something in order to obtain another one are the core concepts of this discipline.…

Introduction: Coalitions are often composed of member organizations. Member involvement is thought to be associated with coalition success. No instrument currently exists for evaluating organizational member involvement in physical activity coalitions. This study aimed to develop a survey instrument for evaluating organizational member involvement…