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validation “involves an intuitive judgement about the test’s content by people whose judgement is not necessarily expert”, as it is mentioned by Alderson et al.
1995: 289. Alderson et al. 1995: 172 mention that the process of face validation simply deal with how those people comment on the appearance of the
language test, although there may be little attention paid to several test items, instructions, or time allocation. Analyzing face validity of an English language
test is thus an attempt for gathering people’s opinion on whether the test looks
valid as an English test or not.
b. Content Validity
Kerlinger 1973: 458 as cited by Alderson et al. 1995: 173 writes that content validity of a language test refers to content representativeness of the test.
Content representativeness of a test means the adequacy of content sampling within a test. In other words, the test must contain as sufficient content samples as
possible in order to fulfill content validity. Hughes 1989: 22 states that a language test is said to have content
validity only if the test contains a “proper sample of the relevant structures”. The relevant structures depend on the purpose of the test. One way to judge whether or
not a language test has content validity is by comparing and matching the test items with the test specifications. The test has content validity if it is proved to
contain a proper number of samples from the test specifications. It is in line with Bachman and Palmer 1980: 41
, who mention that the test is content valid if “the selection of tasks” that appear in the test “is representative of the larger set of
tasks of which the test is assumed to be a sample”.
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Heaton 1975: 154 has the same opinion about content validity. To have content validity,
“a language test should be so constructed as to contain a representative sample of the course
”. Procedure of content validation involves a careful analysis of the language being tested and of the particular course
objectives. The relevance between the test items, or the test content, and the course objectives should be apparent. McNamara 2000: 25 implies that test
content must reflect carefully the domain of the test, that is, the set of tasks or the kinds of behaviors in the criterion setting.
Content validation is, therefore, a necessary stage in a language test validation, as emphasized by Bachman 1990: 244. It should demonstrate that the
language test i s relevant to and covers a “given area” of content or ability of the
related language course. A test developer needs a list of given area of content or ability content areas in order to generate test items. Therefore, procedure of
content validation may make use of the same list of given content areas to check out its relevance with the test items. Bachman 1990: 71 writes that the
development of achievement tests is generally based on particular course syllabus, which represents the content areas. Alderson et al. 1995: 173 clearly mention
that content validation calls for the investigator to analyze and compare the test content with the test specification, e.g. a formal teaching syllabus, curriculum, or
domain specification. According to Bachman 1990: 244, content validation includes two facets,
namely content coverage and relevance. Content coverage indicates the coverage of content areas that are required in a language test, or the degree of test tasks
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representation of the behavioural domain in question. Investigation on the second aspect requires the specification of the behavioural domain in question and the
attendant specification of the task or test domain. In short, it involves a thorough analysis of the language test content relevance to the specification. The analysis
should end up concluding whether or not the test contains adequate content samples from the specification.
McNamara 2000: 51 implies that the investigation on a language test content validity is an observation on the relevance of topics included in test to the
topics that have been delivered to students. It may understandably involve the consideration about the purpose of the test designing as well. McNamara 2000:
25 also puts a notion that the view about test content is related closely to the view of the test construct. A language test development must be started with a
consideration about the test content, that is what are to be included in the test. The decisions about the test content imply a consideration about the way language and
language use are viewed in test performance, along with the relevance between test performance and real-world context of use.
B. Theoretical Framework
Language test is a set of instruments in forms of questions and problems whose function is to
measure an individual student’s language abilities and knowledge in relation to a foreign language that he or she has learned. It is a
useful instrument with which educators can obtain reliable and valid information on their students’ language abilities. That information is a feedback for the
