ALTAANZ
  • About ALTAANZ
  • ALTAANZ Committee
    • Current Committee
    • 2021 Committee
    • 2020 ALTAANZ Committee
    • 2018 - 2019 ALTAANZ Committee
    • 2017 ALTAANZ Committee
    • 2016 ALTAANZ Committee
    • 2015 ALTAANZ Committee
    • 2014 ALTAANZ Committee
    • 2013 ALTAANZ Committee
    • 2012 ALTAANZ Committee
    • 2011 ALTAANZ Committee
  • Joining ALTAANZ
  • ALANZ - ALAA - ALTAANZ 2022
  • ALTAANZ Online Research Forum 2021
  • LTRC/ALTAANZ Online Celebratory event 2020
    • About the event
    • Event Programme
    • LTRC Anniversary Symposium
  • Past ALTAANZ Conferences
    • ALANZ / ALAA / ALTAANZ AUCKLAND 2017
    • ALTAANZ Conference Auckland 2016 >
      • Keynote Speakers >
        • Plenary Abstracts
      • Teachers' Day
      • Pre-conference workshops
      • Conference programme
    • ALTAANZ Conference Brisbane 2014
    • ALTAANZ Conference Sydney 2012
  • Past ALTAANZ / LTRC Workshops
    • LTRC / ALTAANZ Workshops July 2014 >
      • Test analysis for teachers
      • Diagnostic assessment in the language classroom
      • Responding to student writing
      • Assessing Pragmatics
      • Introduction to Rasch measurement
      • Introduction to many-facet Rasch measurement
    • LTRC / ALTAANZ workshops September 2015 >
      • A Practical Approach to Questionnaire Construction for Language Assessment Research
      • Integrating self- and peer-assessment into the language classroom
      • Implementing and assessing collaborative writing activities
      • Assessing Vocabulary
      • Revisiting language constructs
  • Studies in Language Assessment (formerly PLTA)
    • Early View Articles
    • Current Issue
    • About SiLA
    • Past Issues >
      • 2022
      • 2021
      • 2020
      • 2019
      • 2018
      • 2017
      • 2016
      • 2015
      • 2014
      • 2013
      • 2012
    • Editorial Board
    • Contributors
  • ALTAANZ Awards
    • ALTAANZ Best Student Paper Award
    • Penny McKay Award
    • PLTA Best Paper Award
  • Sponsorship for Educational Activities
  • Newsletter: Language Assessment Matters
  • Contact us
Testing Measurement Invariance of an EAP Listening Placement Test across Undergraduate and Graduate Students
Soo Jung Youn, Northern Arizona University
Seongah Im, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

https://doi/10.0000/0000
Volume 5, Issue 2, 2016
Abstract: The increasing number of international undergraduates enrolled in English-medium universities creates challenges for an existing EAP (English for Academic Purposes) placement test, especially when the validity of the existing test is not examined with incoming undergraduate examinees. As an attempt to address this issue from a measurement perspective, this study tested measurement invariance in a listening placement test across undergraduate and graduate examinees to investigate whether the test measures the same trait dimension across qualitatively distinct groups of examinees. Using 590 students’ listening placement test results, the best fitting baseline model was identified first and then competing models with a series of increasingly restrictive hypotheses were compared to test measurement and structural invariance of the target test across the undergraduate and graduate examinees. Measurement invariance across the undergraduate and graduate examinees was held, indicating invariant factors, equal factor loadings for each item, and error variance. However, structural invariance was not completely established especially for the factor means across two groups, which may suggest different score interpretations and uses depending on examinees’ academic status.
Keywords: measurement invariance, confirmatory factor analysis, EAP placement test, listening test, Mplus
Click to download Full Text