The purpose of the present investigation was to replicate and extend the International Affective Picture System norms (Ito, Cacioppo, & Lang, 1998; Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 1999). These norms were developed to provide researchers with photographic slides that varied in emotional evocation, especially arousal and valence. In addition to collecting rating data on the dimensions of arousal and valence, we collected data on the dimensions of consequentiality, meaningfulness, familiarity, distinctiveness, and memorability. Furthermore, we collected ratings on the primary emotions of happiness, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear. A total of 1,302 participants were tested in small groups. The participants in each group rated a subset of 18 slides on 14 dimensions. Ratings were obtained on 703 slides. The means and standard deviations for all of the ratings are provided. We found our valence ratings to be similar to the previous norms. In contrast, our participants were more likely to rate the slides as less arousing than in the previous norms. The mean ratings on the remaining 12 dimensions were all below the midpoint of the 9-point Likert scale. However, sufficient variability in ratings across the slides indicates that selecting slides on the basis of these variables is feasible. Overall, the present ratings should allow investigators to use these norms for research purposes, especially in research dealing with the interrelationships among emotion and cognition. The means and standard deviations for emotions may be downloaded as an Excel spreadsheet from www.psychonomic.org/archive.

As large-scale accountability testing becomes more refined, statewide standards are being created so that teachers and students can create learning and assessment targets that are aligned with statewide testing systems. An important hurdle in assisting teachers in their efforts to create standards-aligned classroom assessments is creating feelings of comfort and confidence in the teachers as they learn the relevant skills. Hence, an important component of a professional development program designed to foster these skills in teachers is an instrument that provides measures that provide useful information for planning development activities for the teachers. This article summarizes a validation study of scores from the Teacher Assessment Efficacy Scale. The analyses indicated support for the six dimensions around which the items were developed, that subscales' scores exhibit adequate reliabilities, and that gains are realized in ways that one would expect when teachers engage in professional development activities designed to increase their proficiencies in creating standards-aligned classroom assessments.

An important part of test development is ensuring alignment between test forms and content standards. One common way of measuring alignment is the Webb (1997Webb ( , 2007 alignment procedure. This article investigates (a) how well item writers understand components of the definition of Depth of Knowledge (DOK) from the Webb alignment procedure and (b) how consistent their DOK ratings are with ratings provided by other committees of educators across grade levels, content areas, and alternate assessment levels in a Midwestern state alternate assessment system. Results indicate that many item writers understand key features of DOK. However, some item writers struggled to articulate what DOK means and had some misconceptions. Additional analyses suggested some lack of consistency between the item writer DOK ratings and the committee DOK ratings. Some notable differences were found across alternate assessment levels and content areas. Implications for future item writing training and alignment studies are provided.

This article describes a novel variation of the Body of Work method that uses construct maps to overcome problems of transparency, rater inconsistency, and scores gaps commonly occurring with the Body of Work method. The Body of Work method with construct maps was implemented to set cut-scores for two separate K-12 assessment programs in a large Midwestern state and was compared with a previous standard setting for one of the K-12 assessments programs that used the traditional Body of Work method. Data from the standard settings were used to investigate the procedural, internal, and external validity of the Body of Work method with construct maps. Results suggested that the method had strong procedural, internal, and external validity evidence to support its application.

The development of alternate assessments for students with disabilities plays a pivotal role in state and national accountability systems. An important assumption in the use of alternate assessments in these accountability systems is that scores are comparable on different test forms across diverse groups of students over time. The use of test equating is a common way that states attempt to establish score comparability on different test forms. However, equating presents many unique, practical, and technical challenges for alternate assessments. This article provides case studies of equating for two alternate assessments in Michigan and an approach to determine whether or not equating would be preferred to not equating on these assessments. This approach is based on examining equated score and performance-level differences and investigating population invariance across subgroups of students with disabilities. Results suggest that using an equating method with these data appeared to have a minimal impact on proficiency classifications. The population invariance assumption was suspect for some subgroups and equating methods with some large potential differences observed.

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