This study uses an analytic example to explore whether metadata might help illuminate such constructs. Specifically, analyses examine whether the amount of time students spend on test items (after accounting for item difficulty and estimates of true achievement), and difficult items in particular, tell us anything about the student’s academic motivation and self‐efficacy.

In this study, we examine the impact of two techniques to account for test disengagement—(a) removing unengaged test takers from the sample and (b) adjusting test scores to remove rapidly guessed items—on estimates of school contributions to student growth, achievement gaps, and summer learning loss.

Student performance on standardized tests reflects more than just mastery of the material.

Although several common threshold methods are based on rapid guessing response accuracy or visual inspection of response time distributions, this paper describes a new information-based approach to setting thresholds that does not share the limitations of other methods.

Disengaged test taking tends to be most prevalent with low-stakes tests. This has led to questions about the validity of aggregated scores from large-scale international assessments such as PISA and TIMSS, as previous research has found a meaningful correlation between the mean engagement and mean performance of countries.

Social-emotional learning (SEL) competencies like self-efficacy and conscientiousness can be predictive of long-term academic achievement. But they can also be difficult to measure. In a new study led by NWEA’s James Soland, researchers investigated whether assessment metadata – the way students approach tests and surveys – can provide useful SEL data to schools and educators. Soland joins CPRE research specialist Tesla DuBois to discuss his findings, their implications, and the promise and limitations of student metadata in general.

When students speed through a computer-based test, their responses are far less likely to be accurate than if they took longer to find the solution, according to new research.