Development of a Graduate Educational Research Competency Test (GER-CT)

Abstract

Admission to a graduate program comes with an assumption that a student can do research independently. Unfortunately, in most cases, the assumption proves otherwise. Research is blamed for the dropping survivability and rising drop-out rate among graduate schools. This study aimed at developing a 50-item test that would gauge the graduate students’ research competency. A pool of multiple choice items (k=100) was constructed and was administered to a development sample (n=300) composed of Master’s degree students. Results show that the Graduate Educational Research Competency Test (GER-CT) is a reliable measure of research competency (α = 0.734). Principal component analysis using orthogonal rotation with Kaiser normalization identified five underlying factors of the GER-CT: perception, numeracy, application, analysis, and evaluation.