Abstract
In this study, the authors constructed 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. The instrument used for data collection was Examiners’ Attitude Towards Knowledge of Malpractice Indicators Scale (EAKMIS). Data were analyzed 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 re-training for all the examiners by the examining body where issues related to the detection of examination malpractice cases while marking would be discussed.
Highlights
The poor quality of school leavers from the different tiers of our educational system has become a very worrisome trend
How many dimensions embedded in the Examiners Attitude towards Knowledge of Malpractice Indicators scale (EAKMIS)? To answer this question, exploratory factor analysis was carried out on the examiners’ responses to attitudinal scale of malpractice indicators in order to determine how valid the items are and items less than 0.32 were removed totaling the number of items used in this study to be eleven (11) out of twenty (20)
Adequacy of the data input was confirmed by means of Bartlett’s sphericity test which showed that the result of the independence model chi-square test statistic was statistically significant (χ2 = 4528.187, df = 55, p < 0.05) and the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) index was 0.879 respectively. This depicts that items in the study are correlated and the source data perfectly fit the number of factors specified
Summary
The poor quality of school leavers from the different tiers of our educational system has become a very worrisome trend. Much as the problem of poor quality of graduates caused by incompetence or inadequacies on the part of examiners is receiving technological attention, it is difficult if not impossible to completely do away with humans in the marking of examinees examination scripts. In WAEC, examiners were told what ought to be done and the consequences that may arise in case of any form of violation in reporting cases of malpractices during marking exercise Such concern with a solution to any ethical violation is grounded in Thomas Hobbes’ (1946) theory of State of Nature which explains that before the formation of an organized society, human beings did not have any set of laws, or any sense of authority or morality (David & Jennifer, 2002). Any involvement in this vice is a clear reflection of the moral decadence
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