Effective assessment is the first step in understanding a range of variables that influence student learning such as motivation, understanding, and types of teaching approaches. Selecting appropriate assessment tools is critically important to ensure that the intended variables of interest are being measured to an acceptable degree of precision. Chemistry educators and chemistry education researchers have many options available when looking for appropriate instruments, they can 1) utilize a published instrument from the literature, 2) modify an existing instrument to better fit their requirements, or 3) create their own instrument. Regardless of the option chosen, attention should be paid to evidence for the quality of data obtained from the instrument. However, generating evidence for a new or modified instrument or evaluating the available evidence for a published instrument can be challenging.

To aid participants in navigating this difficult, and often jargon-heavy, aspect of effective assessment, this workshop will use the Standards for Education and Psychological Testing as a basis for discussing the generation and interpretation of instrument quality evidence including aspects of validity and reliability. This workshop will focus primarily on assessment of existing instruments from the literature. Participants will spend the majority of the workshop time discussing and evaluating available evidence for instrument quality and identifying instruments to meet their own classroom and/or research assessment needs.