Validity of an online reading assessment: a survey among Sri Lankan university students

Abstract

English Language Teaching (ELT) usually focuses on teaching and learning the four skills, namely reading, writing, listening, and speaking. However, reading is considered to be the most essential skill for academic success as it is a skill necessary to gather the information that is stored in printed text forms everywhere. The present paper aims at the validation of a reading test targeted at learners at a tertiary level of education. An online reading test using Google form was administered to 124 students. The responses were subjected to Rasch Measurement Model (RMM) Analyses using the Winsteps version 4.4.7 software to find out the psychometric properties of the reading test. The findings revealed that the person and item reliability of the test were .77 and .91 respectively. The analyses indicated the dimensionality of the reading test and provided evidence that the online reading test was valid and reliable to assess the reading proficiency of the tertiary level students. The study provided insights on the utility of using the RMM analyses in the validation of a reading test to measure the reading ability of second language learners.