There is a substantial literature on attempts to obtain information on the proficiency of respondents from distractors in multiple choice items. Information in a distractor implies that a person who chooses that distractor has greater proficiency than if the person chose another distractor with no information. A further implication is that the…

There are at least two procedures to assess item difficulty stability in the Rasch model: robust z procedure and "0.3 Logit Difference" procedure. The robust z procedure is a variation of the z statistic that reduces dependency on outliers. The "0.3 Logit Difference" procedure is based on experiences in Rasch linking for tests developed by…

In this paper, we describe a new method we have developed for setting cut scores between levels of a test. We outline the wide variety of potential methods that have been used for such a process, and emphasize the need for a coherent conceptual framework under which the variety of methods could be understood. We then describe our particular…

Indicator 8 of the State Performance Plan (SPP), developed under the 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA 2004, Public Law 108-446) requires states to collect data and report findings related to schools' facilitation of parent involvement. The Schools' Efforts to Partner with Parents Scale (SEPPS) was…

According to two decades of research, parental sexual orientation does not affect overall child development. Researchers have not found significant differences between offspring of heterosexual parents and those of lesbian and gay parents in terms of their cognitive, psychological, or emotional adjustment. Still, there are gaps in the literature…

Letter name knowledge (LNK) is a key predictor of later reading ability and has been emphasized strongly in recent educational policy. Studies of LNK have implicitly treated it as a unidimensional construct with all letters equally relevant to its measurement. However, some empirical research suggests that contextual factors can affect the…

This article describes the development of a ten-item scale to assess biology majors' self-efficacy towards the critical thinking and data analysis skills taught in an upper-division cell biology course. The original seven-item scale was expanded to include three additional items based on the results of item analysis. Evidence of reliability and…

The Revised Danish Learning Styles Inventory (R-D-LSI) (Nielsen 2005), which is an adaptation of Sternberg-Wagner Thinking Styles Inventory (Sternberg, 1997), comprises 14 subscales, each measuring a separate learning style. Of these 14 subscales, 9 are eight items long and 5 are seven items long. For self-assessment, self-scoring and…

Developed a method for conditional pairwise estimation in the Rasch model for ordered response categories using principal components analysis and evaluated the procedure through a simulation study. Results show that the quality of the estimates is excellent. (SLD)

Developed a procedure for evaluating item-level nonresponse bias in questionnaire items using logistic regression to determine whether nonresponses are random or systematic in nature for one question from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1994 concerning drug use behaviors. Identified systematic nonresponses and the magnitude of…

Examined the sensitivity to change over time of the Amytrophic Lateral Sclerosis Assessment Questionnaire (ALSAQ-40; C. Jenkinson and others, 1999). Findings for 764 individuals show that the ALSAQ-40 is a valid and responsive disease-specific health-related quality of life instrument for studies of patients with motor neuron diseases. (SLD)

Developed school versus benchmark comparison reports based on groups of easily comparable school types for Queensland, Australia schools. The state benchmark for each set of comparable schools estimated how easy it was, on average, for members of the benchmark group (parents or students) to endorse each of the School Opinion Survey Likert-scale…

Attempted to illuminate practical limitations on the Rasch model by focusing on the recovery of the density scale through five simulation trials. Results show that when error distributions are insufficient, the results may be ordinal at best, and when error distributions are nonsymmetrical, the positions of items may be biased with respect to the…

Studied four different approaches for handling missing data for their capacity to mitigate against the effect of omitted responses on person location estimation. Results from a Monte Carlo study show that the hot-decking procedure performed best of the methods examined. (SLD)

Compared the observation of children's growth in reading using grade equivalents with that using the Rasch simultaneous vertical equating procedure. Results from equating 25 reading tests show that grade equivalents differ more between two different test forms than do ability measures obtained from the Rasch simultaneous vertical equating. (SLD)