abstract this study scrutinized the interaction between linguistic and strategic variables in reading comprehension test performance of iranian efl learners. to this end, the interaction among the participants’ reading comprehension test performance, use of test-taking strategies, and level of language proficiency was analyzed. the participants comprised 286 students who answered a reading comp...

A basic statistic that students learn about in their classes is the standard deviation. Like any statistic, standard deviations are influenced by systematic factors and randomness. I propose that researchers should report “corrected” or “true” standard deviations and I show how to calculate them. The notion of “true” statistics comes out of classical test theory (see Lord and Novick, 1968; Gull...

The score reliability of language performance tests has attracted increasing interest. Classical Test Theory cannot examine multiple sources of measurement error. Generalizability theory extends Classical Test Theory to provide a practical framework to identify and estimate multiple factors contributing to the total variance of measurement. Generalizability theory by using analysis of variance ...

Test theories can be divided roughly into two categories. The first is classical test theory, which dates back to Spearman’s conception of the observed test score as a composite of true and error components, and which was introduced to psychologists at the beginning of this century. Important milestones in its long and venerable tradition are Gulliksen’s Theory of Mental Tests (1950) and Lord a...

Measurement theories are important to practice in educational measurement because they provide a background for addressing measurement problems. One of the most important problems is dealing with the Measurement Errors. A good theory can help in understanding the role of errors they play in measurement; (a) To evaluate the examinee's ability to minimize errors and (b) Correlations between varia...

We used a Guttman model to represent responses to test items over time as an approximation of what is often referred to as "points lost" in studies of cognitive decline or interventions. To capture this meaning of "point loss", over four successive assessments, we assumed that once an item is incorrect, it cannot be correct at a later visit. If the loss of a point represents actual decline, the...