Bulgarian Journal of Science and Education Policy (Dec 2019)
Examiners' Attitude Towards Kmowledge of Malpracrice Indicators: Construction and Validation of a Measurement Instrument
Abstract
Examination malpractice has invaded Nigeria and has only increased in tempo despite measures intended to curb it. It is therefore not in doubt that some stakeholders and policy makers in the educational sector today including teachers who combine public examining duties may not be knowledgeable enough to track the "menace" while marking. In this study, the authors con-structed and validated instrument to measure examiners' disposition towards knowledge of examination malpractice indicators of West African Examinations Council (WAEC). Consequently, scale development research type of single subject design was employed. The sample for the two phases consisted of nine hundred and sixty (960) WAEC mathematics examiners from 9 marking centres, which were drawn randomly from Osun, Ogun and Ondo State, Nigeria. Instrument used for data collection was Examiners' Attitude Towards Knowledge of Malpractice Indicators Scale (EAKMIS). Data were analysed using Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Ordinal Alpha. The results showed that the scale was reduced from twenty (20) to eleven (11) items across three (3) dimensions. Final compliance indices were: χ2 = 457.54, p = 0.01, RMSEA= 0.03, GFI = 0.96, AGFI = 0.96, TLI = 0.94, NFI = 0.90, SRMR= 0.01, CFI= 0.91 and IFI= 0.91. The ordinal alpha reliability index for the three (3) factors of EAKMIS was 0.79, while the reliability index for each of the subscale of the EAKMIS ranged from 0.85 to 0.93. It was recommended that there should be intensive training and retraining for all the examiners by the examining body where issues related to detection of examination malpractice cases while marking would be discussed.
