Assessing test-taking strategies of university students: developing a scale and estimating its psychometric indices

Test-taking strategies are important cognitive skills that strongly affect students' performance in tests. Using appropriate test-taking strategies improves students' achievement and grades, improves students' attitudes toward tests and reduces test anxiety. This results in improving test accuracy and validity. This study aimed at developing a scale to assess students' test-taking strategies at university level. The scale developed was passed through several validation procedures that included content, construct and criterion-related validity. Similarly, scale reliability (internal reliability and stability over time) was assessed through several procedures. Four samples of students (50, 828, 553 and 235) participated by responding to different versions of the scale. The scale developed consists of 31 items distributed into four sub-scales: Before-test, Time management, During-test and After-test. To the researcher's knowledge, this is the first comprehensive scale developed to assess test-taking strategies used by university students.