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Student sits at workstation and looks at laptop. © Aliona Kardash​/​TU Dortmund
IEA Funding

Agile PAIR Project on Digital Test-Taking Behavior Receives IEA Funding

Icon of the globe with a opened book © Karolin Kriesch​/​TU Dortmund
The Agile PAIR project on digital test-taking behavior has received funding from the IEA. The project investigates how process data from digital assessments can be used to better understand test-taking behavior.

A new research project examining how students interact with digital assessments has been awarded funding by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). The project, titled “Beyond the Score: A Multi-Level and Cross-Grade Analysis of Process Data in TIMSS 2023 for Equity, Instruction, and Item Design,” will officially begin on April 1. The project is led by Prof. Dr. Philipp Doebler from Agile PAIR and brings together an international research team specializing in psychometrics, educational measurement, and large-scale assessment.

International assessments such as TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) have traditionally focused on students’ final test scores. However, with the transition to fully digital assessments in TIMSS 2023, researchers can now analyze detailed log data that record how students actually work through test items, including response times, navigation patterns, and click sequences. These so‑called process data provide an objective record of students’ micro-level behaviors while solving problems and open new possibilities for understanding how test-taking strategies, motivation, and engagement influence performance. The project aims to move beyond simply cleaning or correcting test scores by using process data to identify new psychological and behavioral constructs related to how students approach assessments. Researchers will investigate patterns such as rapid guessing, persistence, and answer revisiting, and examine how these behaviors relate to students’ backgrounds, instructional environments, and national contexts.

A key feature of the study is its comparative perspective across grade levels. By analyzing data from both fourth- and eighth-grade students in TIMSS 2023, the team will examine how test-taking behavior changes across developmental stages and whether similar behaviors have different meanings depending on students’ age, experience, and digital familiarity. The project will also explore whether differences in test-taking behavior contribute to achievement gaps between student groups or countries. By linking process indicators with contextual data such as socio-economic status, motivation, and classroom practices, the research aims to provide deeper insights into equity in international assessments. With the increasing use of digital testing worldwide, the project represents an important step toward understanding not only what students answer on assessments, but also how they arrive at those answers.

Further information:

  • Full list of involved researchers: Philipp Doebler, Purya Baghaei Moghadam, Hamdollah Ravand, Susanne Frick, Farshad Effatpanah Hesari