In this article, a 2-way multigroup common factor model (MG-CFM) is presented. The MG-CFM can be used to estimate interaction effects between 2 grouping variables on 1 or more hypothesized latent variables. For testing the significance of such interactions, a likelihood ratio test is presented. In a simulation study, the robustness of the…

Policymakers and school administrators have embraced value-added models of teacher effectiveness as tools for educational improvement. Teacher value-added estimates may be viewed as complicated scores of a certain kind. This suggests using a test validation model to examine their reliability and validity. Validation begins with an interpretive…

Educational researchers commonly use the rule of thumb of "design effect smaller than 2" as the justification of not accounting for the multilevel or clustered structure in their data. The rule, however, has not yet been systematically studied in previous research. In the present study, we generated data from three different models…

The Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002) tracks the educational and developmental experiences of a nationally representative sample of United States high school students who were sophomores in the spring of 2002. This First Look report provides a descriptive portrait of their postsecondary education experiences through the end of the…

Trend estimation in international comparative large-scale assessments relies on measurement invariance between countries. However, cross-national differential item functioning (DIF) has been repeatedly documented. We ran a simulation study using national item parameters, which required trends to be computed separately for each country, to compare…

This research examines the complex patterns by which distinct dimensions of critical consciousness may lead marginalized adolescents toward distinct forms of political action. Structural equation modeling was applied to nationally representative data from the Civic Education Study (2,811 ninth graders; M[subscript age] = 14.6), first establishing…

The generalized graded unfolding model (GGUM) is an ideal point model of responding that is consistent with the Thurstonian theory of respondent behavior. Ideal point models have recently generated interest in the realms of attitude and personality assessment. One unclear aspect of applying ideal point models is the influence of…

Do teachers assess same-race students more favorably? This paper uses nationally representative data on teacher assessments of student ability that can be compared with test scores to determine whether teachers give better assessments to same-race students. The data set follows students from kindergarten to grade 5, a period during which racial…

The article employs exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) to evaluate constructs of economic, cultural, and social capital in international large-scale assessment (LSA) data from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2006 and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009. ESEM integrates the…

Smartphones and tablets are used as experimental tools and for quantitative measurements in two traditional laboratory experiments for undergraduate physics courses. The Doppler effect is analyzed and the speed of sound is determined with an accuracy of about 5% using ultrasonic frequency and two smartphones, which serve as rotating sound emitter…

Research has shown that many educators do not understand the terminology or displays used in test score reports and that measurement error is a particularly challenging concept. We investigated graphical and verbal methods of representing measurement error associated with individual student scores. We created four alternative score reports, each…

Many classroom climate studies suffer from 2 critical problems: They (a) treat climate as a student-level (L1) variable in single-level analyses instead of a classroom-level (L2) construct in multilevel analyses; and (b) rely on manifest-variable models rather than on latent-variable models that control measurement error at L1 and L2, and sampling…

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are considered the "gold standard" for evaluating an intervention's effectiveness. Recently, the federal government has placed increased emphasis on the use of opportunistic experiments. A key criterion for conducting opportunistic experiments, however, is that there is relatively easy access to data…

This study examined the psychometric properties and measurement invariance of the Arabic version of "My Class Activities" (MCA), an instrument designed to measure students' perceptions of interest, challenge, choice, and enjoyment in classrooms. Scores of 3,516 Sudanese students in Grades 2 to 8 were used. Confirmatory factor analysis…

Language learners' productive role in teaching and learning processes has recently been the focus of attention. Therefore, this study aimed at investigating the effect of oral vs. written output-based instruction on English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' vocabulary learning with a focus on reflective vs. impulsive learning styles. To this…