Defining Past Exam Papers and Their Relationship to Fairness and Validity

An Analysis of English Test Preparation Materials for University Entrance Examinations in Japan

Abstract

In the context of high-stakes testing, test takers often use a test preparation material called a “past exam paper.” Although this term is used to refer to a series of questions distributed on the past examination day, no study has given its operational definition. The present study examined the contents of English test preparation materials for university entrance examinations in Japan, and proposed four definitions: (a) an original entrance examination paper which has been distributed on the examination day; (b) a test preparation material which is composed of original entrance examination questions, model answers, and trend analysis of questions, all of which are published per university per year; (c) per university per subject; and (d) per subject. With these definitions, this study explored the reason why previous studies could not reach consensus on the effectiveness of a past exam paper in terms of fairness of test preparation and validity of test score interpretation.