The empirically designed English Comprehension Test was initially developed as a means of assessing individual’s English comprehension skills. The test development of the English Comprehension Test led to the piloting of two test versions of the English Comprehension Test, namely, version 1.2 and version 1.3. The purpose of this study was to statistically explore the factors emerging from the two test versions of the English Comprehension Test. This study is the initial step towards establishing the construct validity, which forms part of the validation of the English Comprehension Test. This quantitative study involved an exploratory inspection of the factors of the English Comprehension Test, with the use of factor analyses. It also employed two factor extraction methods (Principal Component Analysis and Principal Axis Factoring) for comparison. These two factor extraction methods used for the exploratory factor analyses revealed a dominant factor for both test versions of the English Comprehension Test, thereby endorsing an argument for unidimensionality of the English Comprehension Test. The similarities between the results for the two test versions confirmed the existence of an inherent structure for the English Comprehension Test, despite the differences between the two test versions. The labelling of the factors of the test also suggests that the English Comprehension Test could be an assessment of cognitive (verbal) aptitude. A major limitation of this study is the restriction of range and lack of generalizability. The contribution made by this study will enhance psychometric validation studies in South Africa as well as increasing literature on South African test construction for multicultural and multilingual individuals.

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The empirically developed English comprehension test (ECT) was created for organisational and educational purposes to assess verbal reasoning. The initial version of the ECT had an associated time limit of 45 min, which required individuals to complete it within the specified time, while the later version of the ECT had no time limit. The ECT’s two test versions – a timed and an untimed version – were piloted as part of the development and validation of the ECT. The purpose of this article was to explore the internal consistency of the two test versions and compare the reliability of the timed and untimed versions of the ECT. This study was conducted to establish whether reliability was affected by the different time limit-related requirements. The sample size for ECT version 1.2 was 597 and ECT version 1.3 comprised 882 individuals. The methods used for comparison in this article involved a graphical display of performance relating to both test versions and an exploration of the times recorded for the untimed test version. A reliability analysis was performed to evaluate the internal consistency of the two test versions. The performance of individuals in the untimed and timed versions of the ECT was similar based on the average minimum and maximum scores. The Cronbach’s alpha indicated that verbal reasoning was measured consistently for the two test versions. This result suggested that time did not negatively affect the reliability of the test.

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