Exploring reading comprehension skill relationships through the G-DINA model

Abstract

By analysing the test data of 1029 British secondary school students’ performance on 20 Programme for International Student Assessment English reading items through the generalised deterministic input, noisy ‘and’ gate (G-DINA) model, the study conducted two investigations on exploring the relationships among the five reading comprehension skills defined by six English language experts. Skill groups, skill types and conflicting relationship were discovered in the investigation about the relationship among reading comprehension skills as part of the cognitive structure of the examinees, which provided insights into the sequence of reading skill training. The investigation about the relationship among reading comprehension skills in the problem-solving process, conducted at the item level, conceptualised skill relationship patterns as strategies for solving items. The study also demonstrated that saturated G-DINA model catered to the characteristics of reading comprehension skills and could be applied to tests involving highly interactive and hierarchical skills.

Keywords:

• reading comprehension skills
• cognitive structure
• problem solving
• cognitive diagnosis
• the G-DINA model

Acknowledgements

This paper is a partial fulfilment of the project ‘Application of cognitive diagnosis to language testing’ (KX171266) sponsored by Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China, and was also supported by the Ministry of Education in China under the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Grant, No. 14YJA880005.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

Ministry of Education in China under the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Grant [grant number 14YJA880005]; Shanghai International Studies University [grant number KX171266].