Sources of information for responses to reading test items

Bickley, A. C.; Weaver, Wendell W.

doi:10.1037/e611302012-147

Cited by 10 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…These data are presented in Table 3. Preston (1964), Weaver (1967), and Tuinman (1973-1974. Taken together, these studies show that subjects have been able to perform quite well in a passage-out condition on a variety of standardized tests of reading comprehension.…”

Section: Analysis and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Preston (1964) found that college students were able to score significantly higher than chance on the Cooperative English Test when deprived of the passages to which the test questions were supposed to relate. Weaver and Bickley (1967) found that college sophomores deprived of reading passages correctly answered 67 percent as many comprehension questions as sophomores who read the passages. Tuinman (1973Tuinman ( -1974, studying performance by fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade subjects on five highly regarded and widely used reading tests, found that subjects deprived of the reading passages scored higher than chance on the comprehension questions.…”

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confidence: 93%

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Passage independence: A neglected issue in the measurement of reading proficiency

Smith

Western

1980

Reading World

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Section: Analysis and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 93%

Passage independence: A neglected issue in the measurement of reading proficiency

Smith

Western

1980

Reading World

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“…Various writers have noted that unless the passages and items are carefully written, it may be possible for examinees to answer correctly the questions without paying careful attention to the associated passages (e.g., Davis, 1964, p. 105). This contention has been supported, in part, by Preston (1962), Weaver andBickley (1967), andPyrczak (1972), all of whom administered standardized readingcomprehension items without the passages. Pyrczak, furthermore, investigated the sources of information and misinformation that examinees used in responding to questions when they did not have access to the passages.…”

mentioning

confidence: 97%

Passage-Dependence of Items Designed to Measure the Ability to Identify the Main Ideas of Paragraphs: Implications for Validity

Pyrczak

1974

Educational and Psychological Measurement

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Items from a standardized reading test designed to measure the ability to identify the main ideas of paragraphs were administered without the associated paragraphs. The two samples consisted of graduate students and inner-city high-school students. A random half of each sample was given brief, general directions for answering the items in the absence of the passages, and the other half was given more extensive directions for answering the items in the absence of the passages. The different directions did not have a significant effect on performance, but both halves of the two samples answered a substantial number of items correctly. An index of passage-dependence was computed for each item, and the index values obtained from the responses of the graduate students and high-school students were substantially correlated. READING comprehension is often measured by asking questions about specific passages that are included in the test. Various writers have noted that unless the passages and items are carefully written, it may be possible for examinees to answer correctly the questions without paying careful attention to the associated passages (e.g., Davis, 1964, p. 105). This contention has been supported, in part, by Preston (1962), Weaver andBickley (1967), andPyrczak (1972), all of whom administered standardized readingcomprehension items without the passages. Pyrczak, furthermore, investigated the sources of information and misinformation that examinees used in responding to questions when they did not have access to the passages. In that study, it appeared that examinees at UNIV OF MONTANA on April 4, 2015 epm.sagepub.com Downloaded from 344 EDUCATIONAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL MEASUREMENT relied upon their general information (or misinformation) as well as the interrelationships among the items on a given passage to select choices. These two bases for responding could constitute a serious threat to the validity of reading-comprehension tests. The present study is concerned with the passage-dependence of readingcomprehension items in response to which neither of these bases for responding would be helpful.Specifically, items in Part II of the Traxler High School Reading Test (Form A) were used in this investigation. Each of the items was designed to measure the ability to find the main idea in a given paragraph. Most of the distracters in these items appear to be true statements but are incorrect as choices because they are not the main idea of the associated paragraph. Thus, it does not seem likely that examinees can use their general knowledge of -the truth or falsity of each choice as a basis for identifying the keyed choices. Furthermore, since each of the items is based upon a separate paragraph, there are no apparent interrelationships among items that examinees can use as a basis for responding.Despite these apparent strengths of the items in the Traxler High School Reading Test, Tuinman (1972, pp. 49-50) suggested that &dquo;In many instances the right answer can be found without reading the passages at all.&d...

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“…This characteristic, known as passagedependency, has been measured in tests of reading comprehension for native speakers, but so far as we know, no previous study has applied this concept t o the reading comprehension section of a major test of (non-native) language mastery. Using reading comprehension tests for native speakers of English, at least four studies have administered test items without the associated passages, and have concluded that not all items are highly passagedependent (Preston 1962, Weaver and Bickley 1967, Pyrczak 1972, and Tuinman 1973. Both Pyrczak (1972) and Tuinman (1973-74) have proposed ways of computing passagedependency indices.…”

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confidence: 99%

Passage Dependency in Esl Reading Comprehension Tests

Connor¹,

Read²

1978

Language Learning

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Reading comprehension tests are supposed to measure students' understanding of what they have read; answering a question correctly should depend entirely on information contained in the associated reading passage. However, both teachers and students suspect that general knowledge and sound guessing may enable one to perform substantially better than chance, even with little knowledge of the reading passage. Studies of “passage dependency” in tests for native speakers of English confirm this suspicion. This paper reports an experiment which measured passage dependency in one major ESL test: the reading comprehension section of the Michigan Test of English Language Proficiency (MTELP). We administered one form of this section (20 items) to 60 adult subjects: 30 native speakers of English and 30 non‐native speakers of varied language backgrounds. Half of the subjects in each group received an ordinary version of the test, with a reading passage preceding each set of five questions; the other half received only the questions, with appropriate instructions (the “passage‐out” condition). The results indicate the extent to which the test is passage‐dependent for both native and non‐native students. Test items varied considerably in their passage dependency. We suggest that passage‐dependency is one measure which can be used to select good reading comprehension test items.

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Sources of information for responses to reading test items

Abstract: The study dicotomizes the source of information in responding to multiple-choice items on reading comprehension tests into "learnings

Cited by 10 publications

References 1 publication

Passage independence: A neglected issue in the measurement of reading proficiency

Passage independence: A neglected issue in the measurement of reading proficiency

Passage-Dependence of Items Designed to Measure the Ability to Identify the Main Ideas of Paragraphs: Implications for Validity

Passage Dependency in Esl Reading Comprehension Tests

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