Answering Reading Comprehension Items without the Passages on the SAT–I
Research has shown that many items on the old SAT reading task are answered correctly when the accompanying passages are missing. The purpose of this study was to find out if the new SAT (SAT–I) is similarly flawed. Reading tasks from two parallel forms of the SAT–I were administered with and without the passages. Analysis showed that, without the passages, examinees performed much better than would be expected by chance. Also, over-all scores in the without-passage condition were strongly correlated with SAT Verbal score. Finally, an item analysis showed that more than 60% of all items were flawed. It appears that performance on the SAT–I reading task, like that on its predecessor, is primarily associated with factors unrelated to reading the passage.