NAEP began to transition to digitally based assessments (DBAs) in 2017. DBAs enable the collection of data on students’ interactions with the assessment. However, these data are not trivial to analyze, given their time-dependent nature, abundance, structural complexity, and inevitable errors in collection. For the full potential of process data to be realized, researchers must possess analytical skills that go beyond traditional statistical analysis. In the upcoming 2022 NCME conference on April 21-24, 2022, researchers from American Institutes for Research (AIR), under the guidance of National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), will conduct a training session using methods taken from business process mining and graph theory to advance the use of NAEP process data.

This training session will continue the work of AIR and NCES to provide opportunities for students, researchers, and interested stakeholders to understand, manage, and analyze NAEP process data. Given that this data provides a link between students’ testing behavior and their performance, many researchers are interested in conducting studies to better understand student response processes, such as students’ engagement with the assessment when completing it, response processes on individual items, and how those processes relate to the students’ performances.

This training session will instruct attendees on how to analyze NAEP Process Data under a process mining framework to gain a better understanding of students’ response processes during the assessment. It is designed for participants interested in using process data with intermediate to high experience working with process data and with a solid understanding of coding in R. Attendees will learn about NAEP assessment features, data manipulation and cleaning, sequence formation, which kinds of research questions can be addressed, and the analytic methods used in process mining approaches.

Please check the National Council on Measurement in Education for the latest information about the 2022 Annual Meeting being hosted on April 21-24, 2022 in San Diego, CA. We will continue to update the R&D Hub with information on how to register for this training as soon as possible.