Factor Analysis

The measurement of test-taking strategies and practices, mostly studied through qualitative methods, has been an important aspect of language testing and assessment research. The current study examines the test-taking strategies of International English Language Testing System (IELTS) test-takers and reports the process of designing and validating an IELTS test-taking strategy questionnaire. To achieve this aim, a questionnaire with 62 items was developed and piloted on 534 IELTS test-takers. To ensure its validity, the questionnaire results were analyzed through Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analyses (EFA and CFA). The final 49-item instrument with eight factors, “test-management (TM)” and “test-wiseness (TW)” strategies in each skill, had adequate psychometric properties. The findings revealed positive correlations between TM and TW strategies, representing strong correlations between Reading TM and Listening TM, Reading TW and Listening TW, and Listening TM and Speaking TM. The developed questionnaire can serve as a diagnostic tool to monitor test-takers’ performance and strategies, mainly in high-stakes tests like IELTS.

While different models and questionnaires have been devised and used to measure learners’ willingness to communicate in a second language (L2 WTC), to date, few scales, if any, can be found to measure foreign language teachers’ L2 WTC (FLT WTC). Therefore, the current project was designed to address this gap in the literature through an empirical investigation of the factors affecting FLT WTC. Consistent with an inclusive review of the literature and expert panel consultations, a model of contributing factors to FLT WTC was hypothesized, a representative questionnaire was devised and went through Exploratory Factor Analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis. A large scale of 1044 foreign language teachers participated in different stages of the study. The statistical indices of the study confirmed that the model was fit and the questionnaire established appropriate levels of reliability, and face, content, construct, convergent, and discriminant validity. It was found that teacher perceptions, student traits, classroom atmosphere, classroom settings, and discussion topics play significant roles in FLT WTC. The study can draw the teachers’ / institutes’ attention to the factors affecting FLT WTC, and the validated questionnaire can be used as an instrument to measure FLT WTC in future studies.  

The present study aimed to investigate vowel hiatus resolution and its relation to vowel shortening in Persian and Central Kurdish within an Optimality-Theoretic framework. The results showed that both Persian and Central Kurdish ​​use glide formation through vowel shortening to resolve hiatus in certain environments. Persian has its own way to resolve vowel hiatus. The two high vowels /i/ and /u/, as a result of glide formation through vowel shortening, are changed into a short vowel and the glides /j/ and /w/, respectively. In Central Kurdish, glide formation occurs in high vowels /iː, uː/ and mid-high vowels /ēː, ōː/. In Persian, glide formation involves a quantitative reduction in the long vowel /iː/ and a quantitative and qualitative alteration in the long vowel /uː/. On the other hand, glide formation in Central Kurdish involves only a quantitative reduction in long vowels. Based on an OT analysis, the main factor in resolving vowel hiatus in both Persian and Central Kurdish is the obligatory presence of onset in the syllable structure. In contexts in which glide formation occurs through vowel shortening, the ranking of the active constraints in Persian and Central Kurdish is: ONSET, AGREE(place) >> MAX, DEP >> IDENT(µ).  

Given the large population of non-Arabic speaking Muslims in the world, the translations of the Qur’an are of crucial importance. While there has recently been a surge of interest in reader response to translations of various genres, less attention has been given to the readers' reception of the Qur’an translations. The aim of the current study was to examine whether attitudes towards the source and target languages in translation (i.e. Arabic and Farsi) constitute distinct factors in the reception of Qur’an translations by readers in a multilingual setting. To achieve this aim the first step was to construct a questionnaire to measure the three key constructs of the study, namely, attitudes towards Arabic, attitudes toward Farsi, and translation reception. To collect the required data, in-depth interviews were first conducted, which led to the generation of an item pool for the noted questionnaire. The questionnaire was then administered to 96 native speakers of Arabic and Farsi for a detailed statistical analysis. Data analysis was conducted using FACTOR software and Smart PLS3. Specifically, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted. Results attested that translation reception, and attitudes towardsource and target languages constitute three distinctive factors. In addition, findings pointed to the moderating role of language attitudes in the reception of the Qur’an translations, with favourable attitudes towards Farsi being associated with more favourable reception of the translations.

This research aim is to identify the dynamic and thermodynamic patterns of heavy and widespread rainfall in northwest of Iran in the period 2000-2019. The percentile method was used to determine heavy rainfall. In dynamic and thermodynamic patterning of heavy rains, factor analysis and hierarchical clustering methods were used. After determining heavy rainfall patterns, two representative days were selected and 500Hpa atmospheric maps were drawn and interpreted. Then, in the GIS software, the heavy rains in the northwest of Iran were zoned. The results showed that in the first pattern, the main factor of air ascent and the occurrence of heavy and widespread rainfall in the northwest of Iran is the Mediterranean cyclone. The presence of a short front in the studied area has increased the intensity of instability, and the establishment of blocking in the mid-level of the atmosphere has caused the strengthening and continuation of precipitation. The results also showed that the main sources of moisture supply for heavy rainfall in the northwest of Iran are the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. The synoptic maps of the representative day of the second pattern showed that the primary cause of the rise of moist air and the occurrence of heavy rain in the northwest of Iran is the merging of the Sudanian cyclone and the Mediterranean cyclone. The existence of a short front and the blocking has caused the creation of a baroclinic atmosphere and, as a result, the rise of air in the studied area.

The assessment of listening abilities is one of the least understood, least developed and, yet, one of the most important areas of language testing and assessment. It is particularly important because of its potential wash-back effects on classroom practices. Given the fact that listening tests play a great role in assessing the language proficiency of students, they are expected to enjoy a high level of construct validity. The present study was dedicated to investigating the construct validity of three different test formats, namely, multiple-choice, gap filling on summary (also called listening summary cloze), and fill-in-the-blank, used to evaluate the listening comprehension of EFL learners. In order to achieve the purpose of the study, three passages with relatively similar readability levels were used for the construction of 9 listening tests, that is, each appeared in three formats. Following a counter-balanced design, the tests were administered to 91homogeneous EFL learners divided into three groups. The statistical analysis of the results revealed that the multiple-choice test enjoyed the highest level of construct validity. Moreover, a repeated measure one-way ANOVA demonstrated that the fill-in-the-blank task was the most difficult with the MC test as the easiest for the participants.

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the psychometric properties of the Parenting Competence Scale. Methods: This research was a descriptive survey. The statistical population included all male and female students in the first grade of high school in District 11 of Tehran during the 2022-2023 academic year. Participants were selected using a convenience sampling method. In this study, to examine the psychometric properties of the Parenting Competence Scale, confirmatory factor analysis was used for construct validity, correlation coefficients for convergent validity, and internal consistency coefficients for reliability. For this purpose, 350 adolescents aged 13 to 15 responded to the Parenting Competence Scale, the Strength-based Parenting Scale (Jach et al., 2018), and the Engagement, Perseverance, Optimism, Connectedness, and Happiness Instrument for Adolescent Well-being (Kern et al., 2016). Findings: The results of confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the Parenting Competence Scale, with a structure comprising four factors—parental warmth, parental demand, social value of patience, and social value of respect for privacy—had good construct validity. Additionally, the results related to the correlation between the dimensions of parenting competence with strength-based parenting and adolescent well-being supported the convergent validity of the Persian version of the Parenting Competence Scale. Furthermore, the internal consistency coefficients of the subscales of privacy, patience, parental warmth, and parental demand were 0.86, 0.79, 0.80, and 0.78, respectively, defending the reliability of the Persian version of the aforementioned scale. Conclusion: Overall, the results of this study, while defending the conceptual positions derived from a positive and non-deficit approach to the field of parenting studies on which the conceptual foundation of the idea of parenting competence is based, also provided substantial evidence in support of the technical characteristics of the validity and reliability of the Persian version of the Parenting Competence Scale.