We are conducting a research program, using independent researchers, to inform the development and validation of PTE Academic. A Technical Advisory Group, comprising experts from both language testing and psychometrics, also provides feedback, advice and critical assessment.
Our in-house research includes:
- Developing item writer guidelines derived from the CEF
- Relating item difficulty and lexical cohesion
- The Pearson International Corpus of International English (PICAE)
- Developing marking criteria based on the CEF
- Investigating the effect of partner scores in paired oral assessment
- Assessing academic English listening
- Concordance studies (relating PTE Academic scores to predictions of scores on other high stakes tests)