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Computer Familiarity and Test Validity: Investigating the Relationship among Gender, Age, Mother Tongue, Field of Study and TOEFL iBT ® Results

Nematzadeh, Arash | 2014

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: English
  3. Document No: 48244 (31)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Languages and Linguistics Center
  6. Advisor(s): Salehi, Javad
  7. Abstract:
  8. Technology introduces different possibilities to different contexts. Educational milieu is one of those situations where technology plays a crucial role. Computer as an outstanding technological feature has changed our daily life. Computer in the educational contexts has affected the way we learn. Every new innovation has its specifications and problems. Computer like other innovations has aspects that should be investigated. In some cases, computer can distort the tests results and be a source of threat for test validity (construct irrelevant variance). Therefore, the researcher chose to analyze the role of this phenomenon in the assessing procedure. Gender, age, mother tongue, and field of study were those variables that in this survey the researcher wanted to probe their probable relationship with the participants’ TOEFL iBT results. In order to do this, one hundred participants were assigned to two groups - the humanities and engineering - and they answered computer familiarity and attitude toward computer questionnaires and a computer based TOEFL iBT®. At the first step, the level of computer familiarity was investigated and the next stage was related to probing attitude of the participants toward computer and effect of three specified variables (age, gender, and mother tongue) on the test results. Results did not indicate meaningful relation between these variables and test scores. By referring to these results it can be claimed that computers will not have any adverse effect on the test results of students from different fields of study
  9. Keywords:
  10. Computer Familiarity ; Testing Validity ; Construct Irrelevant Variance ; Computer-Based Tests

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