Developing questionnaires to measure students’ expectations and perceptions of assessment quality

Abstract

Students form expectations and perceptions about assessment quality, and they experience the consequences of inferior assessment quality. These expectations and perceptions influence how students use assessment and the information it provides in educational practice. Unfortunately, little is known about students’ expectations and perceptions of assessment quality, and no evaluation tool is available to measure students’ expectations and perceptions of assessment quality to obtain more insight into their perspectives. Therefore, this study aims to construct two questionnaires: the Students’ Expectations of Assessment Quality Questionnaire (SEAQQ) and the Students’ Perceptions of Assessment Quality Questionnaire (SPAQQ). Both questionnaires were analysed using principal axis factoring with direct oblimin rotation of the data (213 higher education students). This resulted in 39 items spread over six factors: (1) effects of assessment on learning, (2) fairness of assessment, (3) conditions of assessment, (4) interpretation of test scores, (5) authenticity of assessment, and (6) credibility of assessment. Cronbach’s alphas varied from α = .76 to α = .94. Educational organisations can use these questionnaires to evaluate assessment quality from a students’ perspective to improve assessment practice.

Keywords

• assessment quality
• perception
• expectation
• scale development/testing
• questionnaire
• higher education
• evaluation
• validation