Construction and Validation of Educational, Social and Psychological Consequences Questionnaires of EPT as a High-Stakes Test

Rezaeian, Mahbubeh; Seyyedrezaei, Seyyed Hassan; Barani, Ghasem; Seyyedrezaei, Zari Sadat

Construction and Validation of Educational, Social and Psychological Consequences Questionnaires of EPT as a High-Stakes Test

Document Type : Original Research Article

Authors

Mahbubeh Rezaeian

Seyyed Hassan Seyyedrezaei

Ghasem Barani

Zari Sadat Seyyedrezaei

Department of English Language Teaching, Aliabad Katoul Branch, Islamic Azad University, Aliabad Katoul, Iran.

Abstract

Individuals are controlled by tests in every advanced society when they want to be admitted in educational courses, to proceed from one stage to the next, or to be given a certificate (Shohamy, 2001b). Accordingly, the present study was carried out to construct and validate educational, social, and psychological consequences questionnaires of English Language Proficiency (EPT) as a high-stakes test in Iran. To achieve the goals, after initial piloting of the item pool, a total number of 252 non-English PhD students completed the final researcher-made questionnaires developed using a comprehensive review of the related literature, experts’ opinions, documents, and interviews. A number of statistical procedures were taken to validate the current questionnaires including Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). EFA was utilized to determine the underlying factors of the scale that affect the variables in a data structure without setting any predefined structure to the outcome and to verify the number of factors; subsequently, these results were confirmed in the CFA phase. Ultimately, the results were discussed and implications of the questionnaires were presented as follows.

Keywords

Educational Consequences

High-Stakes Test

Psychological Consequences

Social Consequences