Students' evaluations of teaching staff can be considered high-stakes, as they are often used to determine promotion, reappointment, and merit pay to academics. Using Facets, the reliability and validity of one student rating questionnaire is analysed. A total of 13,940 respondents of the Human Science Division of International Islamic University…

Traditionally, women and minorities have not been fully represented in science and engineering. Numerous studies have attributed these differences to gaps in science achievement as measured by various standardized tests. Rather than describe mean group differences in science achievement across multiple cultures, this study focused on an in-depth…

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 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…

Used a suite of Rasch measurement techniques to meet competing demands in establishing statewide benchmarks relating to the School Opinion Survey carried out over 1,200 government schools in 1 Australian state. Solutions to a variety of measurement and reporting problems were all found within the Rasch family of models. (SLD)

Designed a questionnaire and created a scale measuring studying and learning based on motivation with items answered from ideal, "capability," and studying and learning behavior perspectives. Results for 372 Australian college students support the view that striving for excellence, desire to learn, and personal incentives are important academic…

Established the longitudinal factorial construct validity of the Quality of Life Scale designed originally to measure the well-being of students in Australian high schools. Results for 5,932 secondary students (1993) and 8,269 students (1999) support the factorial construct validity of the measure. (SLD)

Studied the dimensionality and construct validity of the School Development Expectation Scale for use with Year 12 students in Australia. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the postulated five-factor model in the validation sample of 8,310 students. The scale was calibrated using the Rasch rating scale, and recommendations were made to refine…

Studied the effects of item grouping on local independence and item invariance, the characteristics of items scaled under the Rasch model that make them sample-free. Data were 107 responses to a survey of teachers' opinions about the Ontario grade 9 literacy test. Although effects of grouping and item phrasing on invariance were found, results…

Tested the metric properties of a Spanish version of the Assessment of Growth Hormone Deficiency in Adults (AGHDA) questionnaire through Rasch analysis with a sample of 356 adult patients in Spain. Results suggest that the Spanish AGHDA could be a useful complement of the clinical evaluation of growth hormone deficiency patients at group and…

Used the Rasch measurement model to explore the construct of a general motor ability in 332 5- and 6-year-old Australian children performing 24 motor skills. After categorizing data, two different, unidimensional scales were created, one for boys and one for girls. (SLD)

Applied a procedure to assess measurement invariance across cultures developed by J. Steenkamp and H. Baumgartner (1998) to a scale to measure cognitive age using data collected in India (n=195), China (n=250), and Korea (n=251). Results from confirmatory factor analyses indicate that the technique provides a valuable tool to assess measurement…

Explored the possibility of developing a common metric for measuring goal orientation by simultaneously calibrating four commonly used goal orientation scales to see if item responses met the unidimensionality requirement. Results for 305 psychology students in France yield a common metric for interpretation and statistical analyses. (SLD)

Proposes a factorial procedure for investigating differential distractor functioning in multiple choice items that models each distractor with a distinct distractibility parameter. Results of a simulation study show that the parameters of the proposed modeling were recovered very well. Analysis of 10 4-choice items from a college entrance…

Developed a computerized adaptive language proficiency test for a community college in Quebec, Canada and obtained item response theory calibrations on the items from 700 to 800 administrations. Describes projected efforts to detect instances in which "cheating low" (answering incorrectly deliberately) occurs. (SLD)