Construct Validity Of Simulated NMET Reading Comprehension

Reliability, validity and feasibility are regarded the three fundamental issues in thefield of language testing, among which validity is of primary importance. Validity hastraditionally been discussed in terms of different types, including predictive validity,content validity, concurrent validity and construct validity. However, researchers areincreasingly inclined to think that validity is a unitary concept and believe thatconstruct validity is the most important type of validity.The National Matriculation Test (NMT) is one of the most significant tests with greatsocial influence in China, in which National Matriculation English Test (NMET) isone of the four tests in NMT. The validity of NMET, to a large extent, relies on thevalidity of its reading comprehension which takes up a big proportion of the totalscore. As an examination during the sprint period before NMET, simulated NMETplays an irreplaceable role with great reference value. In language testing, scholarssuggest the more high-stake a test is, the more necessary we need to assess it from theperspective of its techniques and applications, and to testify its construct validity. Inconsideration of the above facts, this paper studies the reading comprehension of the2013simulated NMET in four major cities of Northeast China, including Harbin,Changchun, Shenyang and Dalian, primarily aiming at scientifically and empiricallyinvestigating the construct validity of the reading comprehension of the test, and findsthis test has, to a large extent, tested the constructs it intends to measure. In addition,the construct-irrelevant means couldn’t threaten the construct of this test. Therefore,this test has high construct validity.