A Study Of Theory-based And Criterion-related Validity Of The Reading Assessment In College English Majors' Final-term Examinations

At present, much has been done on the validity of large-scale tests and standardized tests, such as TEM4 and TEM8 for English majors and CET4 and CET6 for non-English majors, while little has been done on the validity of small-scale tests and formative tests, such as mid-term examinations and final-term examinations. English majors'reading assessments in small-scale tests are also important thus this thesis attempts to investigate theory-based validity and criterion-related validity of the reading assessment in university or college English majors'final-term examinations by comparing with the reading comprehension parts of CET6.This study uses a framework for validating the reading assessment in university or college English majors'final-term examinations in terms of theory-based validity and criterion-related validity. Theory-based validity was evaluated by investigating whether the reading assessment in university or college English majors'final-term examinations (the final reading assessment) can test the reading comprehension abilities which are theoretically supposed to measure. Criterion-related validity was evaluated by comparing the final reading assessment with the reading comprehension parts of CET6. The participants of this study are 92 sophomore English majors from Ludong University by convenience sampling. The instruments of this study include two tests: the reading assessment in university or college English majors'final-term examinations (the final reading assessment) and the reading comprehension test of CET6. And the data were analyzed using factor analysis and correlation analysis.The general findings of this study suggest that the reading assessment in university or college English majors'final-term examinations can basically test the reading comprehension abilities theoretically hypothesized and it has theory-based validity to great extent (see Section 3.1 Theory-based Validity of the Final Reading Assessment); Pearson correlation coefficient between the scores of the reading assessment in university or college English majors'final-term examinations (the final reading assessment) and the scores of the reading comprehension parts in CET6 is .430, and it, to some extent, has criterion-related validity in comparison with the reading comprehension parts of CET6 (see Section 3.2 Criterion-related Validity Between the Final Reading Assessment and the Reading Comprehension Parts of CET6). However, the implications suggest that the reading assessment in university or college English majors'final-term examinations should be improved greatly. We should lay emphasis on those reading comprehension items, such as for comprehending logical relationships in contexts, judging and inferring according to the available reading materials and grasping the author's opinions, attitudes and intentions, and design fewer sole vocabulary items and grammar items.This study also shows that, in order to evaluate the unitary validity of a test, it is necessary to investigate the other aspects of validity, that is to say, content validity, scoring validity and consequential validity for future studies in this area.