Examiners’ knowledge of malpractice indicators: Construction and validation of a measurement instrument

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.