ABSTRACT

Evidence-Centered Design (ECD) is a view of assessment as evidentiary argument; it is an argument from what we observe students say, do, or make in a few circumstances to inferences about what they say, do or make more generally (Mislevy, Steinberg, & Almond, 2002). ECD can serve as a cornerstone of test validation, providing items that are well matched to the domain definition and inferences that can be drawn from students’ performances. As the ECD process is implemented and the test is developed, the domain from which the content is drawn is delineated at both general and specific levels and items are created to assess the key aspects of the domain. Thus, both content and construct evidence for validity are built in during the development of the items (Ebel & Frisbie, 1991; Fuhrman, 1996). This chapter lays out the basic ideas of ECD and illustrates its use with two applications in the context of community colleges: (a) developing an assessment for students in commercial vehicle driver training programs (Wentland, 2008), and (b) designing assessments of 21st-century skills across disciplines in a community college curriculum (Yarnall & Ostrander, 2009; Yarnall, Toyama, Gong, Ayers, & Ostrander, 2007).