“When the cook tastes the soup, that’s formative; when the guests taste the soup, that’s summative.” —Robert Stake “How do you know what students know?” is an ever-present question—one best answered by a combination of formative assessment and summative assessment. When allowed to work together, they greatly improve student learning. In addition, they help stakeholders […]

Validity. Construct relevance. Reliability. Fairness. Score comparability. For the sake of all stakeholders and for the sake of fair play, this is what every large-scale educational assessment for a linguistically and culturally diverse student population needs to achieve. But how can existing tests be successfully adapted for this purpose? The road map lies within the […]

The translation and adaptation of tests and assessments (and all that it entails) is one of my favorite topics. That’s why today I’d like to highlight some of the blog’s most popular posts discussing the ins and outs of translating and adapting tests and assessments, including some best practices. Assessment Roundup First, a definition of […]

Educational translation services for all languages, all grade levels, all subjects and all formats. Unparalleled quality and experience for education that works. If you’re reading this blog post, then you may be familiar with all the translation and adaptation work Responsive Translation does on high-stakes K-12 exams and assessments in different US states. But did […]

What pilot testing is and how important it is to the test adaptation process. Does your organization require a test in a different language? Or a test adapted for a different culture? Testing instruments are often adapted for use in different linguistic and cultural contexts for education, health and other applications. Testing instruments, like the […]

What makes a good assessment? A good assessment is a valid assessment as well as a fair assessment. While test developers and psychometricians have different methods of constructing testing instruments, method bias is always something that you should plan to try to balance out. This is especially true of adapted assessments, where original testing instruments […]

We must compare apples to apples, not apples to oranges. Cross-cultural assessments are important measures of test takers’ knowledge, skills, beliefs and/or aptitudes. Cross-cultural assessments can be used for a variety of reasons, such as screening job applicants and advancing social science research. Whether they are used for high-stakes or low-stakes purposes, however, one typical […]

In educational testing, the ability to compare the scores of an adapted assessment with the scores of its original version depends greatly on the concept of equivalence and a lack of bias. Bias in an assessment occurs when, due to the characteristics of the test, groups of test takers with similar true abilities will as […]

In the assessment field, test translation and test adaptation are two terms that are sometimes used interchangeably. However, test translation and test adaptation are not the same thing. Here we’ll explore what these two terms really mean and how they can work together to create a testing instrument that is both valid and fair. We’ll […]

The International Test Commission’s “ITC Guidelines for Translating and Adapting Tests” is a document that informs and directs our work adapting tests for different linguistic and cultural contexts. As a translation agency that specializes in high-stakes projects, we regularly translate and adapt tests and assessments in fields like education, health and human resources. The wisdom […]