Asghar Minaei | University of Allameh Tabatabaii (original) (raw)

Papers by Asghar Minaei

Research in Medical Education, 2019

Introduction: One of the most controversial issues in educational measurement is to determine the... more Introduction: One of the most controversial issues in educational measurement is to determine the cut score during the development and administration of a test. This paper aimed at using the Rasch model (item mapping) in determining cut score of the comprehensive pre internship exam in medical education. Methods:This is a descriptive cross-sectional study. in doing so 13 faculty members of Tehran University of Medical Sciences were selected as the panelists Data collection instrument was the 200-item pre intership exam which administered in the Region 10 of the national medical science system between August 22 and September 21, 2016, that were responded by 274 students of university of medical sciences A cut score was set to identify pass/fail score for performance assessment. Data were analyzed by Winstep. Result: According to the findings, the item reliability of this exam was 0.98 (PR= 0.98) and person reliability of 0.93 (IP= 0.93), that indicate the sample variance and test length were suitable and the items were selected from the nine regions proportionally. Examining items by panelists using the item map method showed three judgment stages included the item difficulty of (-0.46), raw score of 103, and ability parameter equivalent of (0.58). Conclusion: Procedural validity of the cut score showed that the use of item map method resulted in greater agreement between the panelists on this score. Results indicated high satisfaction of the panelists because of feasibility of this process and implementation stag.

Waks, and others who assisted in data collection and management; and three anonymous reviewers fo... more Waks, and others who assisted in data collection and management; and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on a draft of this article.

It is necessary for international tests, such as TIMSS and PIRLS, to have Structural Equivalence,... more It is necessary for international tests, such as TIMSS and PIRLS, to have Structural Equivalence, also known as Structural Comparability. In other words, test items should be functionally identical for all the participant countries and groups. The present research was an attempt to examine the structural comparability of TIMSS 2007 8th-Grade Science Test and differential functioning of its items among Iranian and American students, as well as the effect of items with differential functioning on the performance of Iranian students. A combination of confirmatory factor analysis and Item Response Theory was used to analyze the data and answer research questions. The results of factor analysis indicated that the science test had structural comparability between the two groups. This finding suggests that both Iranian and American students use an identical conceptual framework to answer the test items. However, the results of differential item functioning analysis indicated that 62% of TIMSS 2007 8th-Grade Science Test items had differential functioning against Iranian students. In short, the poor performance of Iranian students in TIMSS 2007 Science Test cannot be attributed to differential item functioning, and the causes should be sought elsewhere. Ministry of Education officials and administrators should try to teach the key concepts of any field in an interrelated manner and to cultivate divergent and multidimensional thinking skills and ability in students by preparing appropriate educational contents. Moreover, attempts must be made to distance the system from the traditional method of teaching, which mainly consisted of theoretical lectures, and involve students in practical and laboratory activities.

Educational Measurement and Evaluation Studies, Jul 23, 2017

Iranian Rehabilitation Journal, 2015

Results: The results of study revealed significant differences in comprehension of passive senten... more Results: The results of study revealed significant differences in comprehension of passive sentences in Specific language impaired children and age-matched typically developing children. The difference in Comprehension of passive sentences was not statistically significant in Children with Specific Language Impairment and younger typically developing children. There were significant differences in the comprehension of passive sentences between two typically developing children groups.

Journal of exceptional children, 2006

Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines, 2022

BACKGROUND Clinicians increasingly serve youths from societal/cultural backgrounds different from... more BACKGROUND Clinicians increasingly serve youths from societal/cultural backgrounds different from their own. This raises questions about how to interpret what such youths report. Rescorla et al. (2019, European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 28, 1107) found that much more variance in 72,493 parents' ratings of their offspring's mental health problems was accounted for by individual differences than by societal or cultural differences. Although parents' reports are essential for clinical assessment of their offspring, they reflect parents' perceptions of the offspring. Consequently, clinical assessment also requires self-reports from the offspring themselves. To test effects of individual differences, society, and culture on youths' self-ratings of their problems and strengths, we analyzed Youth Self-Report (YSR) scores for 39,849 11-17 year olds in 38 societies. METHODS Indigenous researchers obtained YSR self-ratings from population samples of youths in 38 socie...

Journal of exceptional children, 2001

Journal of exceptional children, 2002

Journal of Modern Rehabilitation, 2017

Introduction: The passive sentence structure is one of the most interesting syntactic structures ... more Introduction: The passive sentence structure is one of the most interesting syntactic structures on language development. Studies in some languages have indicated that comprehension of this syntactic structure takes place late in the language acquisition process. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the comprehension of active and passive structures in 48-59- and 60-71-month-old Persian-speaking children. Material and Methods: 100 children aged 48-71 months (38 children aged 48-59 months and 62 children aged 60-71 months) participated in this study from seven different kindergartens and three preschools. Five active sentences and four passive sentences were uttered, and the children were asked to look at one of the four pictures in front of them and choose the correct one. After recording the replies, comprehension scores were compared between both age groups and both gender using independent t-test. In the end, the percentages of correct and wrong answers were ana...

هدف: هدف پژوهش حاضر تعیین مهارت‌های شناختی زیربنایی لازم برای پاسخگویی به سؤال‌های آزمون هوش ریون... more هدف: هدف پژوهش حاضر تعیین مهارت‌های شناختی زیربنایی لازم برای پاسخگویی به سؤال‌های آزمون هوش ریون و شناسایی نقاط قوت و ضعف دانش آموزان پایه نهم در این مهارت با استفاده از مدل‌های سنجش تشخیصی شناختی بود.روش: پژوهش حاضر به لحاظ نوع داده‌های جمع‌آوری شده، جزء پژوهش‌های توصیفی و به لحاظ هدف جزء پژوهش‌های کاربردی محسوب می‌شود. جامعه آماری این پژوهش کلیه دانش آموزان پایه نهم مدارس دولتی شهر تهران در سال تحصیلی 95-94 بود که از میان مناطق نوزده‌گانه آموزش و پرورش 700 نفر دانش‌آموز دختر و پسر از طریق روش نمونه‌گیری تصادفی خوشه‌ای انتخاب شدند. نخست با کمک نظر متخصصین حوزه هوش یک ماتریس Q که شامل روابط بین 8 مهارت زیربنایی و 60 سؤال آزمون ریون بود تشکیل گردید و با استفاده از مدل غیر جبرانی DINA با کمک بسته CDM در محیط نرم‌افزار R مورد تجزیه و تحلیل قرار گرفت. سپس به‌منظور تعیین احتمال تسلط آزمودنی‌ها در هر یک از مهارت‌ها با تعیین نقطه برش 7/0 برای حد تسلط، با استفاده از روش پسینی مورد انتظار در چهارچوب مدل DINA، افراد مورد بررسی در هر یک از مهارت‌ها به دو گروه مسلط و غیر مسلط تقسیم شدند.یافته‌...

International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology

OBJECTIVES Lack of formal tests to assess the various dimension of language in Persian is one of ... more OBJECTIVES Lack of formal tests to assess the various dimension of language in Persian is one of the main challenges of speech and language pathologists in Iran. The purpose of this study was to develop a Persian Syntax Comprehension Test to assess the syntax comprehension in Persian speaking children aged 4-10 years old. METHODS the study included four phases. In the first phase, syntactic structures of Persian were extracted and then, items generation was performed. In the second phase, content validity was determined and images were designed for the items. In the third phase, two pilot studies were carried out and difficulty and discrimination indices for items were determined and in the last phase, 788 typically-developing children (436 children aged 4-6 and 352 children aged 6-10 years old) and 15 children with Developmental language disorder were recruited then, psychometric properties (construct and concurrent validity, test-retest, and split-half reliability) were evaluated. In the final step, standard score and percentile were calculated. We used Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, version 24.0 (SPSS, Inc., Chicago, IL) for the statistical analysis of the data. The significance level was (P < 0.05). RESULTS Final version of Persian syntax comprehension test contains 24 syntactic structures and 96 items. Items' Difficulty indices were between 0.33 and 0.90. There was a significant difference among the age groups for the mean total score of the Persian syntax comprehension test. In addition, a high correlation existed between total scores of this test and those of grammar understanding subtest of Test of langue development (r = 0.52, P < 0.001). The correlation of total Persian syntax comprehension test score of the two rounds of test performance and the split-half coefficient were estimated to be 0.56 and 0.85, respectively. CONCLUSION It seems that the Persian Syntax comprehension test has satisfactory values for the reliability and validity measures, and it can be used as a suitable instrument by researchers and clinicians.

Journal of clinical child and adolescent psychology : the official journal for the Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, American Psychological Association, Division 53, Jan 24, 2018

As societies become increasingly diverse, mental health professionals need instruments for assess... more As societies become increasingly diverse, mental health professionals need instruments for assessing emotional, behavioral, and social problems in terms of constructs that are supported within and across societies. Building on decades of research findings, multisample alignment confirmatory factor analyses tested an empirically based 8-syndrome model on parent ratings across 30 societies and youth self-ratings across 19 societies. The Child Behavior Checklist for Ages 6-18 and Youth Self-Report for Ages 11-18 were used to measure syndromes descriptively designated as Anxious/Depressed, Withdrawn/Depressed, Somatic Complaints, Social Problems, Thought Problems, Attention Problems, Rule-Breaking Behavior, and Aggressive Behavior. For both parent ratings (N = 61,703) and self-ratings (N = 29,486), results supported aggregation of problem items into 8 first-order syndromes for all societies (configural invariance), plus the invariance of item loadings (metric invariance) across the majo...

Journal of exceptional children, 2007

Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 2007

This study compared teachers' ratings of behavioral and emotional problems on the Teacher's Repor... more This study compared teachers' ratings of behavioral and emotional problems on the Teacher's Report Form for general population samples in 21 countries {N = 30,957). Correlations between internal consistency coefficients in different countries averaged .90. Effect.s of country on scale scores ranged from 3% to 13%. Gender effects ranged from < 1% to 5%. and age effects were all <1%. With great consistency across countries, scores were higher for boys than for girls on eight scales: Total Problems; Externalizing; the Attention Problems, Rule-Breaking Behavior, and Aggressive Behavior syndromes; and Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM)-onented Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Problems, Oppositional Defiant Problems, and Conduct Problems. Correlations between mean item ratings in different countries averaged .74. Teacher's Report Form results were thus similar across 21 very diverse countries, despite differences across these countries in school systems, models of pedagogy, and curricula.

Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Apr 1, 2007