Eunice Eunhee Jang

• PhD
• Professor at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Background Artificial intelligence (AI)-derived electrocardiographic aging (ECG-aging) has been found to be associated with the risk of atrial fibrillation (AF). We aimed to assess the causal association between the discrepancy in AI-predicted electrocardiographic age and chronological age (AI-ECG age gap) and AF risk. Methods In UK Biobank partic...

Background The impact of 24-hour movement behaviors on cardiac conduction disease remains poorly understood. Purpose We aimed to investigate whether device-measured 24-hour movement behaviors were associated with the risk of cardiac conduction disease. Methods We included 92,436 participants from the UK Biobank who wore wrist accelerometers for 7...

Background Numerous studies have investigated the association between serum testosterone levels, testosterone replacement therapy (TRT), and cardiovascular risk. However, research examining the relationship between testosterone levels and atrial fibrillation (AF) risk remains limited. We comprehensively analyzed the association between total testos...

Background Sick sinus syndrome (SSS) and atrial fibrillation (AF) frequently coexist and interact bidirectionally, often to initiate and perpetuate each other. The polygenic risk score (PRS) assesses the cumulative risk of disease onset based on variations at multiple genetic loci. To date, no specific PRS has been established for SSS. This study i...

This study examines early language and literacy from Indigenous perspectives, addressing the educational gap for Indigenous children. Through an Indigenous methodology, 22 participants revealed themes on culturally responsive education, cultural identity, tradition preservation, and addressing intergenerational trauma. Findings emphasize the need f...

Background Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a common cardiac arrhythmia linked to a higher risk of stroke, heart failure, and death. Telomeres are DNA-protein complexes located at the end of chromosomes, and telomere length is known to be associated with biological aging and age-related disease. However, the relationship between leukocyte telomere lengt...

Objective To explore whether the addition of left atrial (LA) function, polygenic risk score (PRS), or both to clinical risk scores improves predictions of atrial fibrillation (AF) and related stroke/systemic embolism (SSE). Methods A total of 36,919 individuals without AF who were assessed for LA emptying fraction and AF-PRS were included from th...

Leukocyte telomere length (LTL) is a well-established biomarker linked to cardiovascular disease, with shorter LTL associated with increased severity of heart failure (HF) outcomes. It is also well known that atrial fibrillation (AF) and HF are closely related and often coexist. This study explores the relationship between LTL and hospitalization d...

Background Sick sinus syndrome (SSS) and atrial fibrillation (AF) often coexist, demonstrating a bidirectional relationship. The polygenic risk score (PRS) represents the cumulative risk of disease onset based on variations at multiple genetic loci and is known as a predictor for disease incidence. However, the PRS for SSS remains under-investigate...

Background Novel strategies to identify patients at risk of stroke/systemic embolism (SSE) earlier before development of clinical atrial fibrillation (AF) might be useful. We examined whether the AF polygenic risk score (PRS) added to a clinical risk model would improve prediction of AF-related SSE in people without prevalent AF. Methods A total o...

Background With ongoing climate change, the duration of sunshine hours will likely increase over the coming decades that escalating air temperature. Little is known about the potential cardiovascular risk from this climate factor. Purpose The aim of this study was to test whether duration of sunlight exposure is associated with incident sudden car...

Background/Introduction Recent studies documented that the frequency of adding salt to foods was significantly related with cardiovascular disease and premature death. Purpose We aimed to investigate the relationship between frequency of adding salt to food and incident atrial fibrillation (AF). Methods The UK Biobank cohort study enrolled more t...

Objectives To investigate whether polygenic risk score for coronary artery disease (CAD-PRS) can guide the initiation of lipid-lowering treatment as well as deferral beyond the statin eligibility criteria. Methods 311,799 individuals aged 40 to 73 years and free of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD), diabetes, chronic kidney disease, a...

Research on the use of standardized test scores in higher education reveals significant variations in attitudes and perceptions of language proficiency tests among test score users. Most test score users have limited knowledge about test score interpretations in terms of what English as additional language (EAL) students typically know and can do a...

Self-regulated learning (SRL) integrates monitoring and controlling of cognitive, affective, metacognitive, and motivational processes during learning in pursuit of goals. Researchers have begun using multimodal data (e.g., concurrent verbalizations, eye movements, on-line behavioral traces, facial expressions, screen recordings of learner-system i...

Post-secondary education institutions with English as a medium of instruction have prioritized internationalization, and as a result, many universities have been experiencing rapid growth in numbers of international students who speak English as an additional language (EAL). While many EAL students are required to submit language test scores to sat...

As a branch of artificial intelligence, automated speech recognition (ASR) technology is increasingly used to detect speech, process it to text, and derive the meaning of natural language for various learning and assessment purposes. ASR inaccuracy may pose serious threats to valid score interpretations and fair score use for all when it is exacerb...

This study investigated the extent to which students’ questioning ability is associated with their literacy abilities, attitudes, perceived text understanding, and interest in the text they read. We further examined these relationships by the type of text they read to generate questions. Fifth- and sixth-grade students ( N = 89) were asked to gener...

Two prominent factors that have been linked to students’ mathematics achievement are teachers’ instructional practices and students’ self-efficacy. However, these factors are typically considered in isolation, negating the relationship between the two. This study examined the effect of two instructional practices, direct instruction and inquiry lea...

Reviewing the development and implementation of the Steps to English Proficiency (STEP) language proficiency assessment framework in Ontario, Canada, this article calls attention to how language proficiency is operationalised in English language proficiency (ELP) standards in ways that may institutionalise hierarchies among home, school and communi...

Children’s oral language proficiency (OLP) is integral for developing literacy skills. Storytelling or retelling is often used by parents and educators to elicit children’s OLP, yet it is less commonly used for assessment purposes. Leveraged by natural language processing and machine learning, this study examined the extent to which computational l...

Funding Acknowledgements Type of funding sources: None. Introduction Obesity is known to be risk factor for incidence of cardiovascular (CV) events. However, the association between the reduction of body mass index (BMI) and incidence of cardiovascular event is not well established in elderly Asian population. Methods From the National Health Ins...

Educational Impact and Implications Statement Many studies have explored the association between children’s reading comprehension and their vocabulary and grammar skills. Usually, such studies require multiple-choice or other forms of selected response measures. This study applied natural language processing to children’s open-ended speech and writ...

Traditional assessments are typically constructed on logical taxonomies and content specifications but lack explicit cognitive models of the processes and problem-solving strategies that underlie student performance. Cognitive Diagnostic Assessment (CDA) fills this gap by combining cognitive science and psychometrics. CDA is in its infancy, but ove...

This study aimed to explore the potential of using acoustic features to predict students’ oral reading fluency using machine learning techniques, and compare error patterns of predictions between students with North American accents and those with other regional accents. For 158 Grades 4–6 students’ oral reading recordings, 1,581 acoustic features...

Increasing linguistic diversity in classrooms has led researchers to examine the validity and fairness of standardized achievement tests, specifically concerning whether test score interpretations are free of bias and score use is fair for all students. This study examined whether mathematics achievement test items that contain complex language fun...

Even though risk assessments are routinely conducted in the criminal justice system to inform sentencing and case management, their cross-cultural applicability remains contested. This study investigated the generalizability of the Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (YLS/CMI), a widely implemented youth forensic risk assessment instru...

Downward trends in Ontario’s math achievement have raised concerns about the need for effective identification of students struggling to meet math achievement standards. This study identified latent profiles from math achievement patterns of students from Grades 3 to 6, examining how specific language and literacy characteristics predicted profile...

In most studies investigating the educational outcomes of linguistically diverse students, variables that identify this population have been considered as static. In reality, owing to the dynamic nature of students and their families, students’ home language environments change over time. This study aims to understand how elementary school students...

Mathematics achievement of Canadian elementary students has recently declined on provincial standardized testing. Despite a current emphasis on accountability-driven education, limited research has acknowledged the relation between heterogeneous student need and patterns of student achievement, specifically in regard to students with individual edu...

This study sought to investigate validity arguments related to IELTS reading score interpretations and use, exploring issues of consequential validity, the intersection of contextual validity and cognitive validity, as well as scoring validity.

The present study examined ways in which young readers respond to customized diagnostic feedback interventions. Individualized feedback and intervention support were provided to six junior elementary students whose profiles were developed based on multiple data sources which considered students’ interests, learning preferences, and reading readines...

This study examined the literacy profiles of students from diverse home‐language backgrounds and tracked those profiles from grade 6 to grade 10. The authors also investigated the predictive relations of students’ immigration background, gender, and participation in two instructional programs. The results from latent class and latent transition ana...

This paper examines assessment policies for K-12 education in Ontario, Canada. We begin with a discussion of Ontario’s education system, and then turn our focus to Ontario’s K-12 assessment policies serving multiple purposes for accountability and classroom learning. We first examine the Educational Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO), which i...

Self-regulated learning (SRL) is a process that highly fluctuates as students actively deploy their metacognitive and cognitive processes during learning. In this paper, we apply an extension of latent profiling, latent transition analysis (LTA), which investigates the longitudinal development of students' SRL latent class memberships over time. We...

The field of language assessment has expanded its focus from making inferences based on performance outcome to examining cognitive processes involving structuring information for conceptual and procedural understandings necessary for successful assessment task completion. The quality of these inferences is subject to the extent to which tasks used...

With increasingly sophisticated information and communications technologies in the modern era, technology is considered to be an important agent for children's perceptual and cognitive skill development. Yet, research on the effect of technology on students' academic learning is inconclusive because there is a longstanding debate about the impact o...

Technology-rich learning environments (TREs) provide opportunities for learners to engage in complex interactions involving a multitude of cognitive, metacognitive, and affective states. Understanding learners’ distinct learning progressions in TREs demand inquiry approaches that employ well-conceived theoretical accounts of these multiple facets....

The field of language assessment has expanded its focus from making inferences based on performance outcome to examining cognitive processes involving structuring information for conceptual and procedural understandings necessary for successful assessment task completion. The quality of these inferences is subject to the extent to which tasks used...

The Ontario Ministry of Education recently implemented the Steps to English Proficiency (STEP) language assessment framework to build educator capacity for addressing the needs of English language learners (ELLs) in K-12 schools. The STEP framework is a set of descriptors-based language pro ciency scales that specify observable linguistic behaviour...

Background: The trend of decreasing length of stay in rehabilitation facilities has led to individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI) entering the community with unmet needs and fewer self-care skills to prevent secondary complications. The implementation of a self-management program for individuals with SCI for the management of these complex need...

Designing, developing, and administering assessments has remained fairly unchanged across the past century. However, recent developments in instructional technology, learning science theory, and advances in the design of assessments necessitate a newfound perspective on assessment. The objective of the present paper is to review the topic of assess...

Cross-sectional survey. To examine the association between psychological characteristics in self-management and probable depression status in individuals with a traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI). Community-dwelling individuals with traumatic SCI living across Canada. Individuals with SCI were recruited by email via the Rick Hansen Institute as wel...

Structural equation modeling was applied to examine the critical dynamic relationship among students’ math self-efficacy, extracurricular technology related activities (e.g., TV viewing, video gameplay and Internet use) and math achievement, using a large-scale provincial math test performance data. Based on the social cognitive theory, it was conj...

Research on issues concerning the assessment of school-age English language learners (ELLs) in curriculum-learning contexts has been relatively less productive than assessment of adult language learners. A growing demand for assessing school-age ELLs has led to the development of assessment frameworks that provide the opportunity to examine the ext...

One critical issue with cognitive diagnostic assessment (CDA) lies in its lack of research evidence that shows how diagnostic feedback from CDA is interpreted and used by young students. This mixed methods research examined how holistic diagnostic feedback (HDF) is processed by young learners with different profiles of reading skills, goal orientat...

BACKGROUND: Given the increasing emphasis on the community management of spinal cord injury (SCI), strategies that could be developed and implemented in order to empower and engage individuals with SCI in promoting their health and minimizing the risk of health conditions are required. A self-management program could be one approach to address thes...

While current literacy theories acknowledge the sociocultural and sociopolitical dimensions of literacy learning and teaching, that is, multiliteracies, there exists a gap between theoretical approaches underpinning literacy teaching and assessment. In this dialogue, we re-enact this divergence by collectively defining multiliteracies and deconstru...

Current evidence has suggested the need for increased self-management support efforts in spinal cord injury (SCI) to reduce secondary complications. However, current self-management programs may not be suitable for the unique needs of individuals with SCI, including reduced mobility and the importance of attendant care. There is a need for greater...

As an alternative paradigm, mixed methods research (MMR), in general, endorses pluralism to understand the complex nature of a social world from multiple perspectives and multiple methodological lenses, each of which offers partial, yet valuable, insights. This methodological mixing is not limited to mixing of methods, but extends to the entire inq...

Diagnostic assessment enables teachers to make inferences about learners’ strengths and weaknesses in the skills being taught. Teachers may provide students with diagnostic feedback to make positive changes in their learning. This pedagogical desire for classroom diagnostic assessment resonates well with formative assessment and differentiates it f...

The study examined differences in reading achievement and mastery skill development among Grade-6 students with different language background profiles, using cognitive diagnosis modeling applied to large-scale provincial reading test performance data. Our analyses revealed that students residing in various home language environments show different...

Background After a spinal cord injury, quality of life, as well as the determinants of quality of life, has been widely assessed. However, to date, there have been no systematic reviews on the impact of quality improvement strategies, including self-management strategies, on the quality of life and well-being of individuals with a spinal cord injur...

Ovid Medline (R) <1946 to July Week 2, 2012>, Ovid Medline (R) In-Process & Other Non-Indexed Citations <July 23, 2012>. (2011–2013).

This paper reports on research examining how library staff in 10 Ontario libraries’ preschool literacy programs support three- and four-year-old children’s early literacy and school readiness as well as their parents’ and caregivers’ literacy interactions with their children. Multiple data sources included surveys of 82 parents/caregivers, observat...

In this article, we explore the processes in which four young readers make meanings through dialogic encounters with an interviewer utilizing the think-aloud as a mediator. We believe that these mediated think-alouds act as both a mediating tool to help effect change in cognition through what Swain (2006b) and others have called “languaging” (the p...

The purpose of this small-scale exploratory study was to examine the effects of using a game-based instructional approach to teach word recognition and spelling to Grade 6 students with reading disabilities (RD) and attention deficit disorders. Treatment and comparison groups were formed. The students were placed in either a traditional spelling gr...

The increasing numbers of English language learners (ELLs) in Canadian schools pose a significant challenge to the standards-based provincial tests used to measure proficiency levels of all students from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds. This study investigated the extent to which reading item bundles or items on the Ontario Secondary Sc...

IntroductionDefinitions and ScopeLarge-Scale Assessment ContextClassroom Assessment ContextNew ApproachesChallengesConclusion References

In this article we present results of a Differential Item Functioning (DIF) study using Shealy and Stout's (1993) multidimensionality-based DIF analysis framework. In this framework, differences in test score distributions across different groups of examinees may be a result of multidimensionality if secondary dimensions (not the primary dimension...

In researching the potential of cognitive diagnostic assessment, researchers concur that the quality of diagnostic inferences is subject to the extent to which the construct representations based on cognitive skills are theoretically compelling, empirically sound, and relevant to test use. In this paper, I argue that the construction of a Q matrix...

With recent statistical advances in cognitive diagnostic assessment (CDA), the CDA approach has been increasingly applied to non-diagnostic tests partly to meet accountability demands for student achievement. The study aimed to evaluate critically the validity of the CDA application to an existing non-diagnostic L2 reading comprehension test and to...

There are both conceptual and practical challenges in dealing with data from mixed methods research studies. There is a need for discussion about various integrative strategies for mixed methods data analyses. This article illustrates integrative analytic strategies for a mixed methods study focusing on improving urban schools facing challenging ci...

Researchers and teachers would like to improve assessments so that they can be used diagnostically to evaluate and monitor learners on particular aspects of their language skills. Current technical knowledge in assessment, however, is better suited to discriminating among learners by locating them on a continuous unidimensional scale. This paper di...

There are both conceptual and practical challenges in dealing with data from mixed methods research studies. There is a need for discussion about various integrative strategies for mixed methods data analyses. This article illustrates integrative analytic strategies for a mixed methods study focusing on improving urban schools facing challenging ci...

This article reports two studies to illustrate methodologies for conducting a conditional covariance-based nonparametric dimensionality assessment using data from two forms of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). Study 1 illustrates how to assess overall dimensionality of the TOEFL including all three subtests. Study 2 is aimed at ill...

WASHBACK IN LANGUAGE TESTING: RESEARCH CONTEXTS AND METHODS. Liying Cheng, Yoshinori Watanabe, and Andy Curtis (Eds.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2004. Pp. xxi + 233. $27.50 paper. Since Alderson and Wall (1993) posited a seemingly rhetorical question, “Does washback exist?” language testing professionals have directed attention to the impact of testing...

This study investigates how college students’ current levels of technology use might be affected by digital divide issues. Survey data were collected from 130 students in colleges of education at two midwestern universities. Factor analysis yielded that students’ uses of technology can be described using three broad categories: entertainment, commu...

Printout. Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2005. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 201-214)

In this article, we use a dialogue format to explore the possible relevance of ideas in the hermeneutic tradition of social science for examining contemporary issues that lie at the intersection of concerns about validity and ethics in language assessment. Specifically, we focus on language testing as a socio-political-cultural practice and suggest...

Printout. Thesis (A.M.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2002. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 91-95).