A Research on defining the factor structures of tests used at secondary schools student selection and placement test

Abstract

This study aims at determining the cognitive skills that the Secondary Schools Test (SST) intends to assess by setting the factor structures of the mentioned test. For this purpose, students’ SST raw scores were used. For the factor analysis, data of the years 2000 and 2001 was attained from MEBETEK Assessment and Evaluation Department. For each year, data of randomly selected 5000 testtakers from among those who passed the test were used in order to determine the factor structures of SST. In order to determine the cognitive skills that the factors assess, naming studies were administered by consulting specialist in the field as well as assessment and evaluation specialists. Consequently, it can be claimed that SST is composed of five factors and that these factors explain approximately % 60 of the total variance.