Measuring Students’ Attitudes Toward Large-Scale Accountability Testing

• In Event: Roundtable Session 19
  In Roundtable Session: Research on Student Perceptions and Teacher Reflections on Assessment: Lessons Learned

Abstract

Students’ attitudes toward large-scale assessments likely affect test-taking motivation and performance, yet psychometrically sound measures of such attitudes are lacking. The current study used multiple college student samples to revise and build a multi-faceted validity argument for the three-factor measure of students’ attitudes toward institutional accountability testing in higher education (SAIAT-HE). The measure had undergone a thorough validation process, including assessment of its internal structure, item revisions, invariance across groups, known-groups validity evidence, relationship with other relevant variables, and utility for predicting attendance. Collectively, these analyses yielded a psychometrically sound self-report measure that can be used to investigate the effects of attitudes in relation to test-taking motivation and performance on large-scale accountability tests.

Authors

• Anna Zilberberg, Evaluation Systems, Pearson

• Sara J. Finney, James Madison University