Construct validity of the Nepalese school leaving English reading test

Dawadi, Saraswati and Shrestha, Prithvi N. (2018). Construct validity of the Nepalese school leaving English reading test. Educational Assessment, 23(2) pp. 102–120.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10627197.2018.1430511

Abstract

There has been a steady interest in investigating the validity of language tests in the last decades. Despite numerous studies on construct validity in language testing, there are not many studies examining the construct validity of a reading test. This paper reports on a study that explored the construct validity of the English reading test in the Nepalese school leaving examination. Eight students were asked to take the test and think-aloud, followed by retrospective interviews. Additionally, seven experts were asked to make judgments regarding the skills tested by the test. The findings provide grounded insights into students’ response behaviors prompted by the reading tasks, and indicate some threats to the construct validity of the test. Additionally, the study reports a low level of agreement among the experts, and a big gap between the skills used by the students and the skills that the experts thought were being examined by the test.