Construct Validity and Difficulty Index of Departmentalized Reading Comprehension Test for Grade 11 Students
Author: Baustista, Liane Neill N.
Date: 2019-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Grade 11,Discourse Analysis,High School Students,Language Tests,Construct Validity,Foreign Countries,Feedback (Response),Guidelines,Difficulty Level,Teacher Attitudes,English (Second Language),Second Language Learning,Second Language Instruction,English Literature,Reading Tests,Reading Comprehension

This is a descriptive study that assessed the construct validity of the departmentalized test for Grade 11 Literature implemented by PHINMA-University of Pangasinan in three (3) consecutive school years. In the context of this study, construct validity of the departmentalized test (DT) was investigated using twofold measures. The first one is carried out by assessing the DT's scope / coverage of learning competencies assessed. The second measure entails an evaluation of the appropriateness of the test types and questions of the DT in terms of their capability to assess students' &quot;Knowledge, Understanding, and Mastery&quot; of the literature course. Findings revealed that the two parts of the DT (i.e. DT Part 1 and DT Part 2) fall short of their compliance in integrating all the learning competencies assigned to Grade 11 Literature course. Nevertheless, the overall DT's rate of compliance (65%) is &quot;Very Satisfactory&quot;. On the bearing of these results to construct validity, the overall DT was found to have a &quot;High level of Construct Validity&quot; in terms of the evaluation of its scope/coverage of competencies assessed. Moreover, the DT's overall rate of appropriateness is 4.40 (Highly Appropriate). This suggests that the types of test employed in the DT and the type of questions registered in the DT are assessed as &quot;highly appropriate&quot;, generally speaking, in terms of how the test types and the questions contribute to the DT's capability to assess students' &quot;Knowledge, Understanding, and Mastery&quot; of the Grade 11 Literature course. The DT's difficulty index across different generations of students subjected to it has a consistent range of &quot;Very Low&quot; level of difficulty, thereby suggesting that the test's difficulty index is close to objective rather than context-sensitive. Guidelines and action plan can be adopted to improve the construct validity of the subject DT, and these should be based on (a) the twofold assessment of the construct validity of the current DT used by the University and (b) the proposed compositional hierarchy of learning competencies assessed by the DT as perceived by teachers. Based on the conclusions of the study, it recommends the need for the University to establish the complete set of learning competencies for the Grade 11 Literature subject, which defines what points should be assessed by the DT. Likewise, there is ample room to improve the adoption of more test types and questions to maximize the DT's capability to evaluate the students' knowledge, understanding, and mastery of the course. On the reports of the DT's difficulty index, it is recommended that prospective revisions of the DT should presuppose pre-testing in order to assess the feedback of test takers and treat them as inputs in the overall design of the DT. Teachers directly involved in the instruction of Grade 11 Literature subject must be consulted and directly involved in the deliberation and decisions as to what learning competencies are appropriate to be assessed by the DT. It is recommended that the University conducts continued monitoring of students' performance in the departmentalized test, as this may be treated as one basis to determine if the DT already requires revision at some point. Finally, the study modestly recommends the use of its proposed guidelines and action plan in its pursuit to further improve the construct validity of its departmentalized test for Grade 11 Literature subject.