Suitability, Portability and Sensitivity – What a Cultural Review will Tell You about Your Assessment

An assessment is designed within a given cultural environment. If you plan to administer the test in regions with different cultural backgrounds, how do you evaluate the cultural divide?

Try a cultural review, even if the test is to be delivered in English only but, say, in the UAE or in South Africa. Culture may cause perception shifts that can threaten the defensibility of your assessment.

Is the test content suitable for the audience you are targeting?

Is the construct portable, is it relevant for the region you are targeting?

Is there a risk of being at odds with cultural sensitivity?

In this Peas in a Pod session at the ATP’s Innovations in Testing Virtual Conference, cApStAn’s founder Steve Dept will set the stage by sharing examples of issues detected at cultural review stage and outline a case study.

Participants will be invited to share challenges they are aware of—or that they have faced when exporting a test—and to propose solutions for the case study.

A process for cultural review of assessment content will be discussed and participants will be invited to enrich it or challenge it.

Session Objectives

1. Raise awareness of culture-driven perception shifts that may cause serious item bias and construct-irrelevant variance

2. Initiation to a dynamic cultural review process in which test developers can play an active part

3. Interaction and exchange of experiences between organisations that deliver their tests in multinational, multiregional and multicultural contexts

Join us during this session on April 27 at 10 am EDT at #atpconf (April 27 – 29)! Register today at www.innovationsintesting.org/register.aspx.