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314 appendix a: overview of pirls 2006 procedures
Scale anchoring is a way of describing students’ performance at various
points on a scale, in terms of the kind of reading they can do and the level
of comprehension they exhibit. It involves a statistical component, in which
items that discriminate between successive points on the scale are identified,
and a judgmental component in which subject matter experts examine
the items and generalize to students’ knowledge and understandings. In
PIRLS 2006, the Reading Development Group worked with the Reading
Coordinator, the PIRLS Reading Consultant, and the timss & PIRLS
International Study Center to describe student reading at the international
benchmarks. The descriptions of the items developed as part of the scale
anchoring analysis are found in Appendix E.
The scale-anchoring procedure is described fully in Kennedy, A.M. & Trong, K. L. (2007). Reporting PIRLS 2006 student
achievement in reading. In M.O. Martin, I.V.S. Mullis, & A.M. Kennedy (Eds.), PIRLS 2006 technical report. Chestnut Hill, MA: Boston
College.