Addressing gender discrimination in cognitive assessment using the English Comprehension Test

Abstract

There is a need to develop tests locally for the diverse population of South Africa, which presents a unique combination of multilingualism and multiculturalism that innately affect performance in internationally created tests (Bekwa, 2016; Foxcroft, 2004; Foxcroft, Roodt, & Abrahams, 2013; Laher & Cockcroft, 2017; Arendse, 2018). The culturally complex context of South Africa makes this a formidable, yet imperative task. The researcher undertook this task and empirically created the English Comprehension Test (ECT). The ECT, a South African empirically developed test, was identified as a measure for verbal reasoning (Arendse & Maree, 2019; Arendse, 2018, 2020) but it is still in the validation process. Orientation: The empirically designed English Comprehension Test (ECT) is theorised to measure verbal reasoning and is currently undergoing validation. The test development produced two versions of the ECT, namely, ECT version 1.2 and ECT version 1.3. This study focuses on the latest test version, ECT version 1.3.