Knowledge and practice of faculty members in assessing the validity and reliability of examinations

¯Abstract Background: Evaluation is one of the important aspects of teaching activity and makes it possible to detect the positive and negative aspects of teaching. So evaluation is very important for improvement of quality of higher education in university. Objective: Determining the knowledge and practice of faculty members about validity and reliability of exams. Methods: In this study 100 faculty members in Ahvaz medical university were selected randomly. Data were gathered via a questionnaire which included 22 questions about validity and reliability. 70 questionnaires returned after 2 months. We used descriptive statistical method for analyzing data. Findings: 80% of subjects knew about content validity 42.8% about surface validity 25% about construct validity and 41.5% about possession validity. 41.5% of subjects had knowledge about test-retest 35.7% about parallel 42.9% about halves split and 24.2% about kouder-Richardson reliability index. In assessment of practice 45.7% of subjects were using content validity and 20% test-retest for validity and reliability of exams . But about other techniques of determining validity and reliability, subjects seemed to fail using them correctly. Conclusion: Knowledge of faculty members about validity and reliability of exams is low and using of various kinds of validity and reliability in exams is very low too.