The 5 Principles

The 5 Principles

1. Practicality

   • An effectve test is practical.
     • Is not excessively expensive, stays within appropriate time constrains, is relatively easy to administer, and has a scoring/evaluation procedure that is specific and time-efficient.

2. Reliability

   • Test is consistent and dependable. If you give the same test to the same student or matched students on two different occasions, the test should yield similar results.
     • Student-Related Reliability; is cause by temporary illness, fatigue, a bad day, anxiety and other physical or phychological factors.
     • Rater reliability; human error subjectivity and bias may enter in to the scoring process.
       • Inter-rater reliability; occurs when two or more scorers yield inconsistent scores of the same test, possibily for lack of attention to scoring criteria, inexperience, inattention or even preconceived biases.
       • Intra-rater reliability; is a common occurrence for classroom teachers because of unclear scoring criteria, fatigue, bias toward particular good and bad students, or simple carelessness.
     • Test Administration Reliability; Unreliability may also result from the conditions in which the test is administered. Other sources of unreliability are found in photocopying variations, the amount of light in different parts of the room, variations in temperature, and even the condition of desks and chairs.
       • Test Reliability; Timed tests may discriminate against students who do not perform well on a test with a time limit.

3. Validity

   • The most complex criterion of an effective test-and arguably is the most important principle.
     • Content-Related Evidence; you can usually identify content-related evidence observationally if you can clearly define the achievement that you are measuring.
       • Direct; testing involves the test-taker in actually performing the target task.
       • Indirect; learners are not performing the task itself but rather a task that is related in some way.
     • Criterion-Related Evidence/Criterion-Related Validity.
       • Concurrent validity; if its results are supported by other concurrent performance beyond the assessment itself.
       • Predictive validity; an assessment becomes important in the case of placement tests, admission assessment batteries, language aptitude tests, and the like.
     • Construct-Related Evidence; is any theory , hypothesis or model that attemps to explain observed phenomena in our universe of perceptions.
   • Consequential Validity; Its impact on the preparation of test-takers, its effect on the learners; and the (intended and unintended) social consequences of a tests interpretation and use.(
   • Face Validity; refers to a degree to which a test looks right, and appears to measure the knowledge or abilities it claims to measure.

4. Authenticity

   • The degree of correspondence of the characteristics of a given language test task to the features of a target language task.
     • The language in the test is as natural as possible.
     • Items are contextualized rather than isolated.
     • Topics are miningful (relevant, interesting) for the learner.
     • Some thematic organization to items is provided, such as through a story line or episode.
     • Task represent, or closely approximate, real-world tasks.

5. Washback

   • Referst to the effects the tests have on instructions in terms of how students prepare for the test.
     • Summative provide assessment at the end of a course or program, do not need to offer much in the way of washback.
     • Formative test, by definition, provide washback in the form of information to the learner on the process towards goals.