Graduate Lounge - June 2008

The NERA Researcher
Vol. 46, Issue 2, p. 14
June 2008

The Graduate Lounge

The Graduate Student Issues Committee (GSIC) of the Northeastern Educational Research Association (NERA) would like to congratulate Peter Swerdzewski from James Madison University for winning the 2007 Best Paper by a Graduate Student Award Competition. The awarding paper is entitled “Examinee Motivation in Low-Stakes Testing: Two Approaches to Identifying Data from Low-Motivated Students in an Applied Assessment Context.” The abstract of the paper appears below, while the paper itself will be available on the NERA website.

A total of eight papers were submitted to the Graduate Student Issues Committee (GSIC). The competing papers were reviewed by four independent graduate students - members of GSIC - and one board-appointed faculty expert. We would like to thank the graduate students who participated in this competition. All papers were of high quality.

Special thanks to Asil Ozdogru who initiated and coordinated this award. Also, special thanks to Thanos Patelis (GSIC Advisor) and Kristen Huff (NERA Board Liaison) for their support and guidance.

Finally, we would like to encourage all graduate students to participate in the 2008 Best Paper by a Graduate Student Award Competition. The deadline for submission will be within one week of the end of the 2008 NERA Conference. An announcement about the award will be sent to all NERA graduate student members beginning October 2008, and will also be posted on the NERA website.

Andri Ioannou, Chairperson

Paper title: Examinee Motivation in Low-Stakes Testing: Two Approaches to Identifying Data from Low-Motivated Students in an Applied Assessment Context
Author: Peter Swerdzewski
Co-authors: Sara J. Finney, J. Christine Harmes
Abstract: Many universities rely on data gathered from tests that are low stakes for examinees but high stakes for the various programs being assessed. Given the lack of consequences associated with many collegiate assessments, the construct-irrelevant variance introducedby unmotivated students is a major potential threat to the validity of the inferences that institutions can make from their assessments. Two approaches to evaluating examinee motivation are discussed in this paper: one that employs a global paper-and-pencil self-report measure of students’ motivation on all tests completed during the course of a testing session, and another computer-based method that non-intrusively measures the amount of time students spend on each item in a test. This study provides evidence that the two motivation filtering methods provide similar aggregate test scores; however, more data was removed using the global paper-and-pencil self-report technique.