Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to determine to what extent there was a differencein student achievement, as measured by the Acuity Language Arts Diagnosticassessment, between students using a paper/pencil or a computer-based delivery method.The researcher also examined to what extent the difference in student achievement wasaffected by gender, minority status, and socioeconomic status. A quantitative researchdesign was used in this study.The population of interest was upper elementary students in the state of Missouri.The sample for the study included approximately 650 fifth and sixth grade students fromMill Creek Upper Elementary during the 2011-2012 school year. At the time of thisstudy, Mill Creek Upper Elementary was a school in the Belton School District locatedsouth of Kansas City, Missouri. The dependent variable was the students’ Language Artsscore from the Acuity Language Arts Diagnostic assessment. Four independent groupingvariables included the assessment delivery method (paper/pencil or computer-based) aswell as the demographics of gender (male/female), minority status (minority/nonminority) and socioeconomic status (low SES/non-low SES).Findings revealed a statistically significant difference did exist between the sixthgrade males and sixth grade females when taking the computer-based assessment. Themean achievement score for the sixth grade males on the computer-based assessment wasmore than 10% lower than the mean achievement score for the sixth grade females.Although a statistically significant difference did exist between the sixth grade males andsixth grade females on the computer-based assessment, the same did not hold true forfifth grade male and fifth grade female study participants or for sixth grade male and sixth grade female participants who took the paper/pencil assessment. Additionally, arelationship between assessment delivery method and minority and socioeconomic statuswas not statistically significant. This research supports the comparability of paper/penciland computer-based assessments but encourages those analyzing achievement data tocontinue to disaggregate the data by the demographics of gender, minority, andsocioeconomic status.