About BEAR
The Berkeley Evaluation and Assessment Research (BEAR) Center designs and delivers educational assessment instruments, performs research in assessment and psychometrics, and trains graduate students in these areas.
We collaborate with researchers in universities across the United States and abroad to develop software and other resources for constructing, managing, administering, and analyzing assessments.
Featured Projects
The core of our research is development and use of appropriate assessment methods for evaluating students, schools, educational policy, and the reform of educational evaluation away from the use of inappropriate standardized tests.
These are some examples of the projects that we are actively developing:
California Department of Education's Desired Results Developmental Profile (DRDP)
DRDP(2015) suite of assessments are now available for early implementation! The DRDP(2015) assessments are authentic observational assessment tools used throughout California to support the development for children from early infancy through kindergarten. For over 15 years, BEAR Center researchers collaboratively refined the tool to ensure that it is a valid and reliable measurement of development in early childhood. BEAR Center is responsible for the DRDPtech technology system.
Project Aspire - Defining and Assessing Mathematical Knowledge For Teaching Secondary Mathematics
The BEAR Center is collaborating with a team of mathematics education content experts at Arizona State University led by Pat Thompson on this NSF-funded project. The goal of Project Aspire is to develop an instrument that assesses secondary mathematics teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching secondary mathematics.
Assessing Data Modeling and Statistical Reasoning (ADM)
The ADM project aims to develop an assessment system to evaluate elementary and middle school students’ skills and understanding related to data modeling and statistical reasoning.
Our Software
In addition to our research in psychometrics, the BEAR Center is dedicated to the development of software that can facilitate the delivery and analysis of assessments, providing teachers with innovative and useful ways to assess students.
Recent Publications
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The latest volume of Measurement: Interdisciplinary Research and Perspectives (Volume 12, Issue 4, 2014) is now available
- This issue is explores the methodological disagreement concerning causal indicators, discussing wether they are inherently sensitive to interpretational confounding or not.
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Selected presentations by BEAR Center researchers:
News & Events
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Understanding the Role of Quantitative Methods in a Culturally Competent Approach to Evaluation
Laura Pryor, Social Policy Research Associates
Prior research has discussed the need for an inquiry into if and how quantitative methods can help evaluators better respond to and engage with culture (Chouinard and Cousins, 2009). Part One addresses this topic through illustrating findings from a review and synthesis conducted across 110 evaluation cases demonstrating culturally competent approaches. Findings discuss the predominant purposes and challenges with integrating quantitative methods with culturally competent approaches.
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Using Mixture and Rating Scale Models to Investigate Response Profiles
Perman Gochyyev, BEAR Center
The purpose of this presentation is to demonstrate a new methodology for identifying different sub-populations of respondents in surveys using a finite mixture approach based on polytomous Rasch modeling. The proposed model aims to identify sets of respondent profiles that differ in their response tendencies. For instance, the model could be used to discover latent classes consisting of respondents either avoiding or preferring extreme categories.
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