ETS Research Centre

Advance quality and equity in education worldwide.

Since the company’s founding in 1947, Education Testing Service (ETS) research has produced important contributions to the fields of education and assessment and is the holder of many patents in the field. ETS’s research is central to our mission to advance quality and equity in education for all learners worldwide. Through our research, ETS works to improve teaching and learning, ensure opportunity for individual learners, and inform education policy and assessment.

ETS Research team

The research staff includes internationally distinguished research scientists, psychometricians, and assessment specialists who support our mission in three main areas related to educational measurement: Assessment Development and Analysis; Assessment Research; and Policy Research.

ETS researchers advance the field of measurement through their experience, capability, and leadership. The goal remains to provide the fairest, accurate, and meaningful assessments possible, as well as to help shape innovative measurement for the 21st century. They help ETS to remain true to its mission in a responsive and responsible way:

  • Responsive in addressing market needs and ensuring product and operational excellence
  • Responsible in continuing to champion integrity, quality, and scientific leadership in educational measurement and in education

Assessment Development and Analysis

Includes work to design assessments, create content for assessments, score assessments, build scales for reporting scores on assessments and ensure that test scores are comparable across time and across test forms. This work is essential to allowing us to meet our mission to build fair and valid assessments.

Assessment research

Drives the improvement and innovation of assessments. It focuses on areas such as: seeking ways to validly and reliably measure personal skills; understanding and enhancing classroom teaching; improving the assessment of literacy; developing natural language processing applications that are fundamental to automated scoring applications; improving the assessment of English learners.

Policy research

ETS also conducts research and evaluations on public policy with the goals of closing achievement gaps among underrepresented student populations and investigating factors that adversely affect student progress at all levels.

ETS also facilitates symposia and conferences to assist with the development of a new generation of assessment and performance management methodologies, technologies, policies and practices.