This study examined the effect of including or excluding repeaters on the equating process and results. New forms of two tests were equated to their respective old forms using either all examinees or only the first timer examinees in the new form sample. Results showed that for both tests used in this study, including or excluding repeaters in the…

Pressure from the U.S. Department of Education has led some states to curb a testing exemption that applies only to the 1 percent of students with the most severe disabilities, but districts that have long used that flexibility to win some breathing room in their accountability systems are bristling. Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act,…

Students learn new instructions well by building on relevant prior knowledge, as it affects how instructors and students interact with the learning materials. Moreover, studies have found that good prior knowledge can enable students to attain better learning motivation, comprehension, and performance. This suggests it is important to assist…

Three experiments (total N = 140) tested the hypothesis that 5-year-old children's membership in randomly assigned "minimal" groups would be sufficient to induce intergroup bias. Children were randomly assigned to groups and engaged in tasks involving judgments of unfamiliar in-group or out-group children. Despite an absence of information…

This study addresses an important problem in English pedagogy in one Outer Circle context, that of India, in that it investigates the match between the stated goals of English teaching in the policy documents and their implementation in actual curriculum, teaching and testing practices. In order to achieve a better match, the study suggests more…

Research on written language comprehension has generally assumed that the phonological properties of a word have little effect on sentence comprehension beyond the processes of word recognition. Two experiments investigated this assumption. Participants silently read relative clauses in which two pairs of words either did or did not have a high…

Studies of international mathematics achievement such as the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) have employed classical test theory and item response theory to rank individuals within a latent ability continuum. Although these approaches have provided insights into comparisons between countries, they have yet to examine how specific…

This study examined the epidemiology of HIV among AI/ANs in Montana. Barriers to HIV testing and motivations to test also were explored. Analysis of data revealed that there were no significant changes in regard to HIV/AIDS case rates, demographic characteristics, or risk behaviors of AI/ANs infected with HIV/AIDS since reporting began in 1985.…

In Hong Kong, onscreen marking (OSM) is superseding paper-based marking (PBM) across the entire national examinations system. This paper describes a qualitative study of the attitudes of Liberal Studies markers towards OSM. This becomes a compulsory subject in Hong Kong's new senior secondary school curriculum to be first examined in 2012, with a…

Background: An overlooked group for school health education advocacy training is college students enrolled in personal health courses. They will be investors and stakeholders in the quality of public education, and the health and academic success of students. Purpose: In this article we present the process used to develop a theory-based instrument…

This paper describes an automatic procedure using MATLAB software to plot the circle diagram for two induction motors (IMs), with wound and squirrel-cage rotors, from no-load and blocked-rotor tests. The advantage of this approach is that it avoids the need for a direct load test in predetermining the IM characteristics under reduced power.…

Whether an ability test delivered on either paper or computer provides the same information is an important question in applied psychometrics. Besides the validity, it is also the fairness of a measure that is at stake if the test medium affects performance. This study provides a comprehensive review of existing equivalence research in the field…

Testing and test results can be used in different ways. They can be used for regulation and control, but they can also be a pedagogic tool for assessment of student proficiency in order to target teaching, improve learning and facilitate local pedagogical leadership. To serve these purposes the test has to be used for low stakes purposes, and to…

Research Findings: Parental expressivity, child physiological regulation (indexed by respiratory sinus arrhythmia suppression), child behavioral regulation, and child adjustment outcomes were examined in 45 children (M age = 4.32 years, SD = 1.30) and their parents. With the exception of child adjustment (i.e., internalizing and externalizing…

We tested an embodied account of language proposing that comprehenders create perceptual simulations of the events they hear and read about. In Experiment 1, children (ages 7-13 years) performed a picture verification task. Each picture was preceded by a prerecorded spoken sentence describing an entity whose shape or orientation matched or…