ABSTRACT
Examination malpractice in Nigeria has become a problem which is gradually destroying all other sectors and giving the country a vital place among corrupt nations in the world. This study critically constructs, validates and standardises instruments in order to obtain dependable data for measuring students’, parents’ teachers’ and school administrators’ attitude toward examination malpractice. Twelve (12) research questions were raised to guide this study.
The descriptive survey Research Design was used for the study. The study covered all the students, parents, teachers and school administrators of public and private secondary schools in Benin Metropolis. The sample size for the study was 5,040 respondents which were drawn from principals (school administrators), teachers, parents of the students and students from public and private secondary schools in the Benin Metropolis. The sampling techniques adopted for the study was a Multistage Disproportionate Stratified Random Sampling. A 4-point likert scale questionnaire tagged ‘Students’ attitude towards examination malpractice questionnaire‘ (SATEMQ), ‘Parents’ attitude towards examination malpractice questionnaire‘ (PATEMQ), ‘Teachers’ attitude towards examination malpractice questionnaire’ (TATEMQ) and ‘School Administrators’ attitude towards examination malpractice questionnaire’ (SAATEMQ) were constructed, validated and standardized by the researcher. The data for the study were collected from the students’, parents’, teachers’ and school administrators’ responses in the constructed ‘Attitude towards examination malpractice scales’ and were subjected to factor analysis.
The factor analysis results revealed that the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) indices of sampling adequacy are significant (0.88, 0.96, 0.92 and 0.841) and they were obtained for the students’, parents’, teachers’, and school administrators’ attitude towards examination scales respectively. Bartlett’s test of sphericity proved that correlations between the items were large enough for conducting a principal components analysis (PCA) (the values are significant at the 0.05 significant level for the four scales). The test items that loaded on each factor were identified and only the test items with factor loading from 0.3 to 0.75 were retained. The best five items were selected from each of the retaind attitude components-cognitive, behaviour and affective. Therefore, the total items selected are 15 items for each of the four scales. The values of item-total correlation was used to establish the construct validity of the scales. The reliability of attitude scales were estimated using Cronbach’s alpha; the final draft of the scales were administered to 30 respondents and reliability coefficients of 0.859, 0.781, 0.947 and 0.851 which were obtaned for the students’, parents’ teachers’ and school administrators’ attitude towards examination malpractice scales respectively. The psychometric results revealed that the students’, parents’, teachers’ and school administrators’ attitude towards examination scales are valid and reliable. Percentile norms were established for interpretation of obtained scores on the scales. It is recommended among others that the students’, parents’, teachers’ and school administrators’ scales should be fully incorporated into the pool of research instruments in Nigeria
