Page 206 - Jurnal Kurikulum BPK 2020

Reliability of the Instruments

According to Beichner (1994), tests with KR-21 ≥ 0.70 are deemed to be reliable
measurements. For the VST, the Kuder-Richardson (KR-21) reliability coefficient is .80.
Meanwhile, Cronbach’s alpha is used to check the internal consistency of items with
polytomous scores. According to Tavakol and Dennick (2011), if the alpha value is higher than
.90, it indicates that there are redundant items in the test. The coefficient alpha for the WAT is
0.83, denoting that this test is also reliable.

Assumption Check

Before performing multiple regressions, several assumptions were checked, namely,
missing values, outliers, normality, independence, multicolinearity and homoscedasticity
(Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007). All the steps in data screening show the values within the
acceptable range.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Table 2
Descriptive Statistics of average scores, standard deviation and score range of breadth and
depth of vocabulary tests and MUET reading comprehension (n = 221)

Variable MPS Average Standardised Standard Score
Score Mean deviation range
(Mean)
MUET Reading 120 61.60 51.33 13.18 32-96
Comprehension
VB 140 73.23 52.31 12.95 45-107
VD 160 109.79 68.62 10.84 80-135
Note. MPS = Maximum possible score

Based on Table 2, the standardised means show that among the three variables,
participants scored the lowest in the MUET reading. Overall, the participants did well in VD
as the standardised mean was the highest compared to VB and reading comprehension (i.e.
68.62%). This shows that MUET reading is more challenging compared to the other two tests,
namely the VST (VB test) and WAT (VD test). This concurs with the finding of Ong, Krishnan
Vengidasamy, Renu Kailsan and Christopher Selvaraj Jacob (2015) that the passages in the
MUET reading are very difficult as the Gunning Fog index for the passages compiled from
1999 to March 2014 are within the difficult range (i.e. 11 - 15.9) as the indices from 13 to 16
would be the reading level for college students aged between 19 and 22 in the United States.
Meanwhile, it is expected that the standardised mean of the VST would be lower than WAT
but the difference of standardised mean between the two tests was only 0.98%. This finding
contradicts with Qian's (2002) study which claims that WAT or VD is more difficult than VLT
or VB as the former one taps more indepth vocabulary knowledge while the latter merely taps
the superficial level of vocabulary knowledge. However, according to Elgort (2012) and Nation
and Beglar (2007) VST is more demanding and difficult because the distractors used have
elements of meaning that are shared with the correct answer.

197