RESOURCES

Allow us to introduce you to the Assessment Life Cycle, an illustration coined by Meazure Learning psychometricians to help simplify and visualize the typical stages of test development. This process is cyclical, not linear. Through this seven-stage method, we demystify the testing process so you can be confident in your exam results, whether you’re a seasoned psychometrician or new to the testing world.

Professional entry-to-practice examinations serve an important gatekeeping and public-protection role in our society. The outcome of such an exam can be life-changing, both for the candidates who take the exam and for the people who will ultimately be served by those candidates (e.g., a nursing candidate and their future patients). In this webinar, Dr. Scott Cassidy will take us “behind the scenes” and explore the science and statistics of examination standard setting.

When it comes to translation and localization, perspective is everything. Over the past several decades, Meazure Learning has translated hundreds of examinations and documents into multiple languages. Most languages have multiple dialects, and each has its own nuances and idiosyncrasies, so what may seem like a straightforward task, can be very complex. Aurélie Lecocq will lead a discussion around the challenges of assessment translation and how to move forward as an industry.

For most assessment programs, exam security tends to require increasingly more attention over time. At a certain point, it becomes clear that an in-house expert is needed to keep up with demands. In this webinar, Dr. Ashley Norris will discuss what the role should look like, some of the core responsibilities, and how to ensure it’s more than just a symbolic posting.

Practice exams play an important role when ensuring test-takers have the appropriate information and preparation tools for your credentialing program. Richard Spence, a Yardstick Sales Manager and ten-year veteran of the industry, walks us through examples of how even programs with limited resources can build excellent preparatory materials.

At this point, your exam has been administered to test-takers. Based on the pattern of test-taker responses, each item has been reviewed to ensure that it meets psychometric standards. And from this analysis, you now have a well-vetted and validated set of test-taker exam scores. What’s left to do now? This white paper explores many of the considerations when undertaking this stage in the exam development life cycle.

At this stage, it is important to revisit the now-vetted set of exam items and calculate test-takers’ final exam scores efficiently and accurately. Stage 6 of the Assessment Life Cycle involves calculating test-takers’ scores on the exam they completed and generating reports that will communicate these results in the clearest and most valid manner possible. The purpose of this white paper is to explain the process of generating final test-taker scores and reports and to explore the considerations that go into designing and disseminating various score reports that meet each client’s unique needs.

At this stage of the cycle, the exam has been written and you are sitting on a pile of test-taker response data. But your work is not over quite yet. Stage 5 of the Assessment Life Cycle involves analyzing test-takers’ responses and looking for patterns to evaluate whether the items in your exam have indeed created a valid assessment. This white paper explores many of the considerations when undertaking this process.

Stage 3 of the Assessment Life Cycle is where exam developers take the items that were written and banked in Stage 2 and compile them to into one (or more) examination forms. This may sound fairly easy; indeed, sometimes examination assembly is just a matter of finding the right items to assess the required subject areas. However, assembling a valid and well-balanced examination form from an item bank is a careful process, and one that requires meticulous effort. This is especially true when creating licensure or certification examinations, or other high-stakes assessments. This white paper explores many of the considerations when undertaking this process.

Every assessment program starts with defining targets and creating test specifications. During this stage, the test developers decide what the goal of their assessment is going to be. These goals are formalized and used to create an “examination blueprint,” which specifies the number and type of questions that the assessment requires to soundly measure each knowledge area. This white paper explores many of the considerations when undertaking this process.