User Guide for the TIMSS International Database.pdf - TIMSS and ...

D A T A B A S E F I L E S C H A P T E R 7
7.2.2.7 Release Status of TIMSS Test Items and Performance Tasks
To aid in the interpretation of the student cognitive item response data, a large number of TIMSS
items have been released to the public along with their scoring guides. For both Populations 1 and
2, written assessment items in Clusters I through Z and the entire set of performance assessment
tasks and coding guides are available. See Chapter 2 for information on how to obtain the
released item sets.
7.2.2.8 Other Variables in the Student Assessment Files
In addition to the written assessment and performance assessment item variables, a number of
other variables described in previous sections are included for each student, to aid in case
identification and in linking to the data in other files:
· Identification variables
· Linking and tracking variables 7
· Sampling variables
· Score variables
The codebooks for student assessment files include a complete list of all of these variables as well
as item and code value labels to assist in the interpretation of the student assessment data.
7.2.2.9 School Performance Assessment Files
The School Performance Assessment files for Population 1 and Population 2 contain school-level
information relevant to the administration of the performance assessment. In these files, there is
one record for each school that participated in the performance assessment in each country,
containing identification variables required to link to other files. In addition, a number of tracking
variables are included with specific information provided by the performance assessment
administrators in each school. The variables included in the School Performance Assessment files
are the following:
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ITROTAT Rotation scheme used
ITPAS1 Adequacy of room
ITPAS2 Time allotted per station
ITPAS3 Adequacy of equipment and material
ITPAS4 Missing information from manual
ITPAS5 Clearness of instructions
For the performance assessment files, additional tracking variables are included related to student participation in the
performance assessment, such as to which rotation and sequence number each student was assigned (ITROTAT, ITSEQ) and
students' participation status for each performance assessment task (ITPARTM1-ITPARTM5; ITPARTS1-ITPARTS5;
ITPARTG1,ITPARTG2). See Harmon and Kelly (1996) for a description of the performance assessment administration
procedures.
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