This study used item response modelling to develop measures of the development of proficiency in speaking, reading and writing English among Hong Kong primary students. Home and family background factors were identified that could be linked to higher than average levels of development in proficiency across two school years, from Primary One to Primary Two or from Primary Two to Primary Three. Participants were 2133 Hong Kong students and their parents, sampled from 140 primary schools that had employed a native-speaking teacher of English to work with the students. Higher than average improvement in English proficiency was associated with the students' attitudes to learning, their opportunities to use English in everyday life, access to books in any language at home and school, parents' level of education and parents' support of their child's English studies. The year level and gender of the student also interacted with home background factors in predicting development of second language acquisition.
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This paper describes a plausible values imputation approach for deriving population estimates on several language proficiency domains. The approach harnessed a multi-dimensional item response analysis combining student responses, rater judgements and student background variables. The target population comprised lower grade primary school students enrolled in the Hong Kong schooling system. The raters were local teachers of English employed within the sampled target schools. The consideration of student background variables in conjunction with student responses and rater judgements facilitated the process of "conditioning" (Reckase, 2002). The primary objective of this research was to impute plausible values for students where no data was provided or where rater data was deemed suspect. By necessity, a secondary objective of this study was to establish rules for justly excluding particular data on the basis of questionable validity. Surveys such as TIMSS, PISA and NAEP have used such "plausible value" methodologies to account for incomplete test designs and person non-response (Beaton & Johnson, 1990; Yamamoto & Kulick, 2000; Adams & Wu, 2002). The point of difference in this study was the use of item response theory (in particular plausible values imputation) to identify and correct for invalid rater judgements in a large-scale educational survey.
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