31 Descriptive research, sometimes known as non-experimental research, deal
with the relation between variables, testing of hypotheses, and the development of the generalization, principles or theories that have
universal validity. It is concerned with functional relationship. The expectation is that if variable A is systematically associated with variable
B, prediction of future phenomena may be possible and the result may suggest additional hypotheses to test.
The above statement not only state that the descriptive research is sometimes called non-experimental research but also deals with the relationship
between variables, hypotheses testing, and developing generalization or theory that has universal validity. This type of research design was used to answer and
analyze the research problems in this study.
3.2 Populations and Sampling Procedures
The populations of this study were the students in the second year of an SLTP in Lembang. The population was taken because they have been studying
English for about two years in the Junior High School based on assigned curriculum for each school. According to Hatch and Farhady 1982:9, a stratified
random sampling gives us a random sample but the sample will be drawn according to the enrollments of students. The amount of the samples involved
from this school were obtained after grouping all the second year students of 469 students from ten classes into high achievement students and low achievement
students based on their academic reports. By using stratified random sampling, researcher randomly took 20 of the total number of students. So, about 92
students of the second year of this school were chosen to become the sample of this research.
32
3.3 Research Instruments
In order to obtain adequate data for the study, there are two instruments used in this research; they were questionnaires and test. The questionnaires were
given to the students. The questionnaires talks about the problems that are faced by the students in reading a text. The questionnaire used in this research was
modified from Ullman and Geva 1981 in Lynch 1996:113 as cited in Gunawan 2004. It was simplified based on the situation and the condition of the
respondents. The questionnaire consisted of 10 statements with five response categories. The simplification was done under the suggestion of the advisor;
considering the clarity, efficiency and practicality of the questionnaire and also considering the characteristics of the respondents and in line with the problems
investigated. To avoid students’ misunderstanding, the questionnaires are in Bahasa Indonesia and clear instructions were given both orally and written in the
first part of the questionnaire. Each items of statement has its ranged score based on Likert Scale see Setiasih, 2006: 58 which was used with the criteria
exemplified in the table below. Students’ scores will show their problems in reading. The questionnaire can be seen in Appendix 16.
Table 3.1 Students’ problems in reading category
CATEGORY SCORE
Always 1
Often 2
Sometimes 3
Seldom 4
Never 5
33 The test was given to the students to know their competence in reading
comprehension. The reading-matter consisted of four texts of recount and narrative which related to the second year of Junior High School curriculum. The
topics of the texts are about narrative and recount texts. Each of text consisted of ten multiple choice questions. At first, the test consists of 50 items. Before they
were used, the reading comprehension test was tried out to 30 students from population with the students involved in this study. The result shows that the test
is valid and reliable Appendix 10 and 11. However, not all items can be used because some items were not good at discriminating power, too easy or too
difficult, thus the number of items was dropped into 40. So, there were 40 questions in the reading test. The test material can be seen in Appendix 17.
For the test instrument, the multiple choice form is chosen for some reasons. First, the scoring is easier, faster and more objective than the other form
of tests. Second, this is very efficient when the number of students is large while the allocated time is very short. Third, the reliability of this type of test is higher
than the essay test Surapranata, 2004 in Syafrizal, 2000. Although it has some disadvantages, i.e. it takes longer time to construct the test and the students have
chance for guessing in answering the items, but this can be eliminated by providing enough time and providing some options for each item Grondlund,
1982. Aside from the instrument test, the Pearson correlation was used to
visualize the relationship between two variables in which to plot the value of one variable against the value of the other Hatch and Lazaraton: 1991. In this case,
34 the students’ scores attained from the reading test would be the variable X,
meanwhile the close-ended questionnaire Likert-type would be the variable Y. These two variables, then, will be calculated using the Pearson correlation.
3.3.1 Validity of the Test
According to Heaton 1988, a good test should have at least three characteristics namely validity, reliability, and practicality. In terms of validity, he
proposes that there are several types of validity. Some of them which are related to this study are face validity, content validity and external validity. He explains
that a test has faced validity if its appearance, the composition of its items, its organization and contents make the test look valid. In terms of multiple choice
test, face validity can be fulfilled by having more or less similar length of answer options, having the same number of answer options, using the same numbering
for example A, B, C, D for the whole items, and similar organization, i.e. once the options are written orderly from the left to right, the rest should also written in
the same way. The test used in this study has the characteristics above, thus the face validity has been fulfilled.
The content validity can be net if the test items reflect the contents of the curriculum the students have learned. It also should have relationship between the
course objectives. The test used in this study can be said to have content validity as they are constructed based on the curriculum and the course objectives and it
measures what it is intended to measure, i.e. to measure students’ comprehension skills on narrative and recount texts Harris, 1969.
35 Meanwhile, the external validity of the instruments in this study is reached
by correlating the results of try-out with the students’ English scores they gained in the first semester. Here, the statistical analysis of Pearson Product Moment
Correlation coefficient is used Evelyn, 1991:434 to analyze the data. The value of the correlation coefficient was obtained calculated by using SPSS Statistical
Package for Social Sciences. The computation shows the result is .882 for the test, which means that the
test is valid since r table with .01 and df = 28 is .4487 Appendix 10.
3.3.2 Reliability of the Test
The reliability of the test items also was calculated by using SPSS by stating the total of odd score and even sore of the items. From the calculation, it is
shown that the reliability index is .666 for the test, while r table with df= 28 and = 0.01 is .4487 Appendix 11. It means that the r of the test is greater than that of
the table. Thus, the test items can be said to be reliable.
3.3.3 Test Items Difficulty
The indexes of items difficulty are calculated using the analyses of test item ANATES Version 4.0.2. The analysis show that from 50 items for the test,
after being tried out, only 48 which can be used, consisting of 4 difficult items, 32 medium items, and 12 easy items Appendix 6. The rest 1 is too easy and 1 is too
difficult, so that they were eliminated from the test. To make the scoring easier, only 40 items for test were chosen.
36
3.3.4 Test Items Discriminating Power
The indexes of items discriminating power are also calculated using the analysis of test item ANATES Version 4.0.2. From the analysis, it can be seen
that from 50 items for the test, 1 item has very good discriminating power , 10 items are good, 29 items are medium, 6 items are bad, and 4 are very bad
Appendix 5. So, of all, there are only 40 items can be chosen. Having analyzed the try out result, 40 items were selected for the test. The
items selected are those which have level difficulty range from easy, medium and difficult and level of discriminating power range from 12.50 to 75.00 with
distracter quality level of good and very good Appendix 7. The characteristics of the selected items for the reading test are in the following table:
Table 3.2 The Characteristics of the Selected Items of Reading Test
Question Item Difficulty
Discrimination Power Distracter Quality
1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8
9 10
11 12
13 Medium
Easy Difficult
Medium Easy
Medium Medium
Medium Medium
Easy Easy
Medium Medium
25.00 37.50
62.50 50.00
37.50 25.00
12.50 37.50
12.50 37.50
25.00 75.00
50.00 Very Good
Good and Very Good Good and Very Good
Good and Very Good Good and Very Good
Good and Very Good Good and Very Good
Good and Very Good Good and Very Good
Good and Very Good Good
Good and Very Good Very Good
37 14
15 16
17 18
19 20
21 22
23 24
25 26
27 28
29 30
31 32
33 34
35 36
37 38
39 40
Medium Medium
Difficult Medium
Easy Easy
Easy Easy
Difficult Medium
Easy Medium
Easy Medium
Medium Medium
Easy Medium
Medium Medium
Medium Medium
Medium Medium
Medium Medium
Medium 50.00
37.50 25.00
12.50 25.00
50.00 25.00
37.50 62.50
12.50 25.00
37.50 25.00
37.50 37.50
62.50 25.00
25.00 25.00
37.50 50.00
37.50 50.00
37.50 37.50
25.00 25.00
Good and Very Good Good and Very Good
Good and Very Good Good and Very Good
Good and Very Good Good and Very Good
Good and Very Good Good and Very Good
Good and Very Good Good and Very Good
Good and Very Good Good and Very Good
Good Good and Very Good
Very Good Very Good
Good and Very Good Very Good
Good and Very Good Good and Very Good
Good and Very Good Good and Very Good
Very Good Very Good
Very Good Good and Very Good
Good and Very Good
38 From the table of the characteristics of the selected items for the reading
test above can be seen that for the level of difficulty, there were 11 easy items, 26 medium items, and 3 difficult items. For the discriminating power, there were 4
items in the range of 12.50, 13 items in the range of 25.00, 13 items in the range of 37.50, 6 items in the range of 50.00, 3 items in the range of 62.50, and 1 item in
the range of 75.00. While for the distracter quality, there were 2 items in the level of good, 8 items in the level of very good, and 30 items in the level of good and
very good.
3.4 Variables and Hypothesis
The characteristics of this study including the variables and hypothesis are shown in following table.
Table 3.3 Box Diagram Showing the Characteristics of the Study
Null Hypothesis H0 There is no significant correlation between students’
mastery of reading skills and their reading comprehension ability.
Research hypothesis H1 There is a significant correlation between students’
mastery of reading skills and their reading comprehension ability.
Significance Level 0.1; two-tailed
Dependent Variable Reading comprehension ability
Independent Variable Students’ mastery of reading skills
Design Ex post facto design
Measurement Scores interval
Other Feature Random selection
39 Statistical procedures
Pearson Product Moment, SPSS 12
3.5 Data Collection Techniques
The two kinds of data, questionnaire and reading test were administered twice to the second year students of an SLTP in Lembang. It was done twice in
order to see the consistency of the respondents in answering the questions. Reading test was administered first then followed by questionnaire. Both required
90 minutes for administering. The result of administering the questionnaire is expected to know the
students’ mastery of the reading skills. The questionnaire consisted of ten statements which correlated to the questions from the reading test. Before they
were given to the students, the researcher explained about the use of the questionnaires that were going to be filled by them. In this activity, the English
teacher also helped. During the activity, the researcher and the English teacher stayed in the classroom to watch the students who were answering the
questionnaires and to help them when they found difficulties in responding the questionnaires.
The scores gained from the questionnaire and the reading test was correlated with statistical analysis. This result would be compared to the result of
the test in order to get the correlation coefficient of the two variables and to identify the solution of their problems in reading. The two set of data were
counted statistically in data analysis.
40
3.6 Procedure of the Research
