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Item position effects in listening but not in reading in the European Survey of Language Competences

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Abstract

In contrast with the assumptions made in standard measurement models used in large-scale assessments, students’ performance may change during the test administration. This change can be modeled as a function of item position in case of a test booklet design with item-order manipulations. The present study used an explanatory item response theory (IRT) framework to analyze item position effects in the 2012 European Survey on Language Competences. Consistent item position effects were found for listening but not for reading. More specifically, for a large subset of items, item difficulty decreased along with item position, which is known as a practice effect. The effect was found across all tested languages, although the effect sizes varied across items, test levels, and countries.

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Correspondence to Andrés Christiansen.

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Appendix

Table 9 Region effects and item position effects per region: English
Table 10 Region effects and item position effects per region: French
Table 11 Region effects and item position effects per region: German
Table 12 Region effects and item position effects per region: Spanish

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Christiansen, A., Janssen, R. Item position effects in listening but not in reading in the European Survey of Language Competences. Educ Asse Eval Acc 33, 49–69 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11092-020-09335-7

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