Investigating the Reliability of the Reading Module of the Iranian Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology’s English Proficiency Test

As a national high-stakes test of English proficiency, MSRT needs further scrutiny of reliability. Thus, the present study aimed to investigate different sources of variation that may impact the MSRT test-takers’ reading comprehension. Accordingly, some factors including the reading topics, item types, and participants’ general proficiency were delved into based on the scores obtained from ۶۰ MSRT prospective candidates. Upon administering a sample of the reading subtest taken from a recent version of MSRT, the collected data was dichotomously scored and then analyzed in terms of internal consistency, inter-correlations, and causal patterns. The yielded results showed an overall reliability of ۰.۸۶ for the reading module, while a moderate interrelationship was obtained amongst the passages (r = ۰.۴۷) as well as the item types (r = ۰.۴۴). Furthermore, the Mixed ANOVA results demonstrated that topic and item type significantly affected the reading performance, whereas the proficiency factor did not play a conspicuous role in distinguishing the participants’ reading accomplishment. Both theoretically and operationally, the results reported through this study may stress the need for reconsidering the influence of such test-method facets as topic and item type in the MSRT reading subtest to upgrade the test’s unidimensionality and fairness.

کلیدواژه ها:

MSRT reading ، Test reliability ، Topic effect ، Item type ، Test bias