Examining the validity and reliability of the exam question types attitude scale and determining the attitudes of the students to the exam question types according to various variables

There are two main aims of this study. The first aim is to develop a tool for measuring the attitudes toward exam question types of secondary school students and to conduct the validity and reliability study of the Exam Question Types Attitude Scale (EQTA-S) developed for this purpose. The second aim is to investigate whether the attitudes of secondary school 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th-grade students towards exam question types make a statistical difference according to gender and grade levels. This study was held in five different public secondary schools in the Gebze district of Kocaeli province in the first and second semesters of the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 academic years. The sample for the first purpose of the study is a total of 781 secondary school students, consisting of three different sample groups (347, 309, and 125 students) randomly selected from five different public secondary schools. The validity and reliability analyses of the Exam Question Types Attitude Scale (EQTA-S), which was developed for the first purpose of the study with these sample groups, were made. The sample for the second purpose of the study consisted of 781 secondary school students studying in the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grades of the same schools. With this sample, it was investigated whether students' attitudes towards exam question types make a statistical difference according to gender and grade level. In the study, the relational survey method was used to collect data. Within the scope of the relational survey method, attitude scales for four different exam question types, exam attitude, and test anxiety scales were applied to secondary school students to collect data for the purposes of the study. The obtained data were analyzed with the SPSS package program. When the data collected for the first purpose of the study is analyzed; showed that the "exam question types attitude scale" developed to determine the question types preferred by secondary school students in an exam has validity and reliability. In addition, when the data collected for the second purpose of the study were analyzed, it was observed that the attitude scores of secondary school students for multiple-choice, true-false, and short-answer exam question types were higher than their attitude scores for open-ended exam question types, respectively. In other words, it was seen that the students mostly preferred the multiple-choice exam question type. It was determined that there was no significant difference according to gender in the open-ended, multiple-choice, and true-false question types attitude scores of the students, but there was a statistically significant difference in favor of male students in the true-false exam question-type attitude scores. According to another result, it was determined that there was no significant difference between the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th-grade students' true-false exam question types attitude scores, while there were significant differences between open-ended, multiple-choice, and short-answer exam question types attitude scores. It was seen that this significant difference was in favor of the 5th-grade students in the open-ended and multiple-choice exam question types, and the 8th-grade students in the short-answer exam question type attitude scores. Keywords: Exam question types, Test anxiety, Test attitude, Validity and Reliability.