Title: Experience of Using the R Software Environment for the National
Assessment Data Processing 

Authors: Mariia Mazorchuk

Affiliation: Ukrainian Center for Education Quality Assessment

Abstract:
Every country holding a national assessment in its education system for the
first time faces a number of problems related to the development of
methodological support and operating activities for such assessments as well
as to collecting, storage and processing of the received data. Last year
Ukraine was holding the National Assessment of Primary Education Quality for
the first time. Nine thousand fourth-year students from over 300 Ukrainian
primary schools participated in the research. This national assessment is
focused on measuring the level of primary school graduates' competence in
Reading and Mathematics. The test and survey results processing was one of the
most important stages of this assessment. The assessment results were mainly
processed by the experts of the Ukrainian Center for Education Quality
Assessment. In order to receive the full understanding of the level of primary
school graduates' competence in Reading and Mathematics, the following main
tasks were set for data processing: raw scoring of test participants' results;
analyses of psychometric features of the measurement instruments developed for
the assessment (Reading and Mathematics tests and test items); searching the
relations between the various factors of the educational environment and the
levels of students' performance according to the test results; visually
presenting the assessment results in an eye-friendly form for the general
public, and others. The R functions were used to solve these tasks. Carrying
out the necessary calculations of the psychometric parameters and statistical
characteristics in the expeditious and high quality manner was possible only
due to the freely available packages of the R Software Environment. We present
the results of experience with R functions used for data processing within the
National Assessment of Primary Education Quality held in Ukraine in 2018.