Introducing Emotioncy as a Potential Source of Test Bias: A Mixed Rasch Modeling Study

This article attempts to present emotioncy as a potential source of test bias to inform the analysis of test item performance. Emotioncy is defined as a hierarchy, ranging from exvolvement (auditory, visual, and kinesthetic) to involvement (inner and arch), to emphasize the emotions evoked by the senses. This study hypothesizes that when individuals have high levels of emotioncy for specific words, their test performance may systematically change, resulting in test bias. To this end, 355 individuals were asked to take a 40-item vocabulary test along with the emotioncy scale. Mixed Rasch model was employed to flag differential item functioning items. Results illustrated that the test takers with high emotioncy toward specific words outperformed the ones in the low-emotioncy group, characterizing emotioncy as a potential source of test bias.     

Diagnostic Classification Models: Recent Developments,Practical Issues,and Prospects

More than three decades after their introduction, diagnostic classification models (DCM) do not seem to have been implemented in educational systems for the purposes they were devised. Most DCM research is either methodological for model development and refinement or retrofitting to existing nondiagnostic tests and, in the latter case, basically for model demonstration or constructs identification. DCMs have rarely been used to develop diagnostic assessment right from the start with the purpose of identifying individuals’ strengths and weaknesses (referred to as true applications in this study). In this article, we give an introduction to DCMs and their latest developments along with guidelines on how to proceed to employ DCMs to develop a diagnostic test or retrofit to a nondiagnostic assessment. Finally, we enumerate the reasons why we believe DCMs have not become fully operational in educational systems and suggest some advice to make their advent smooth and quick.