Procedures and Criteria for Evaluating Reading and Listening Comprehension Tests

Abstract

READING and listening comprehension tests are two examples of a general class of test-taking situations in which the test taker is ex-posed to a more or less clearly specified type and amount of infor-mation and is then asked to respond to questions based on the ma-terial. In this kind of task the tester asks the subject to recognize a rule or set of rules which relates the elements of the information provided. These tests are characterized by (a) an initial stimulus input in the form of some aurally or visually presented material, e.g., a paragraph; (b) a subsequent stimulus input, again in the form of some aurally or visually presented material and related to the ini-tial input, e.g., a set of questions pertaining to the paragraph; and (c) a response or set of responses tied to these two stimulus inputs. From the subject’s response(s) the tester infers whether the subject has correctly formulated the rule.