Abstract for symposium proposal: International assessments such as TIMSS and PIRLS have seen rapid growth in terms of participating member countries. Additionally, methodological and substantive research in the area of large-scale assessment has enjoyed rapid growth as these assessments assume an increasingly important place in international education policy discussions. This expansion has opened a number of interesting research areas, many of which are currently being pursued around the world and within the European Union. The need for continued research in this area is exemplified by the following quote. “The demands of extending the application of large-scale assessment technologies to new subject matter areas as well as to an increasing diversity of countries whose linguistic, economic, and cultural circumstances are vastly different have challenged developers, methodologists, and psychometricians to create solutions that are as reliable as they are elegant.” (Wagemaker, Kirsch, 2008, p. 5) In response to this call, the proposed symposium will present a set of papers on issues related to the development, use and interpretation of large-scale assessment (LSA) results. The papers in this symposium examine several issues surrounding LSA and make use of this rich data resource with specific emphasis on either substantive or methodological concepts applied to International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) studies. Two of the proposed papers address complex issues related to LSA data such as the multilevel structure of the data and the construction and use of imputed test scores. While two of the papers make use of simulated data to explore methodological issues, all papers employ empirical data collected as part of LSA programs such as TIMSS to illustrate and support their findings. The objectives of this symposium are to: (1) examine how LSA can assist educational researchers in identifying factors describing effective schools; (2) analyze the influence of curriculum non-coverage on scale scores; (3) show the advantages of using plausible values over traditional point estimates of individual proficiency; and (4) investigate the degree to which person and item parameters are recovered as a function of matrix sparseness and sample size. The symposium will provide a forum for interested educational researchers to discuss possible uses of IEA data for international research. Symposium participants include researchers and practitioners who have been conducting research in international assessment for a number of years. These participants have unique and valuable insights and knowledge about practical and theoretical issues related to international LSA.

See symposium paper abstracts below

See symposium paper abstracts below