ABSTRACT
The primary purpose of international large-scale assessments has been to compare student achievement levels across educational systems, but a secondary purpose, growing in importance, has been to compare student responses on background questionnaires. For example, at a recent international meeting, a representative of one country’s educational system announced to the audience that he had “good news and bad news” to report. The good news was that his country was “once again, one of the top countries in the world in student achievement.” The bad news was that his country “was among the worst in students’ attitudes towards school.” This statement, essentially implying parity between achievement scores and background factors, reflects the seriousness with which educational leaders are now treating data obtained from background questionnaires. On the other hand, one wonders whether such data, based almost exclusively on self-assessments using
CONTENTS
Attitude-Achievement Anomaly ...................................................................... 278 Problems with Rating Scales ............................................................................. 279 Innovative Item Types as Alternatives to Likert Scales .................................280 Anchoring Vignettes ........................................................................................... 281 Forced Choice ......................................................................................................283 Signal Detection Correction for Topic Familiarity ..........................................283 Summary ..............................................................................................................284 Acknowledgments ..............................................................................................284 References .............................................................................................................285
