Understanding Chinese university student conceptions of assessment: Cultural similarities and jurisdictional differences between Hong Kong and China

Hong Kong (HK) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), while sharing historic cultural roots, have different policies for and practices of educational assessment. Student conceptions of assessment function to guide individual behaviour in response to the functions, purposes, and consequences of assessments. A new self-report questionnaire was developed to account for attitudes and beliefs detected in qualitative and pilot survey studies. In a two-group confirmatory factor analysis, an eight-factor solution, in which seven factors were dependent on a higher order factor (i.e., School Quality), was found with good fit. The seven factors were named: Societal Uses, Class Benefits, Accuracy, Negative Aspects, Teacher Use, Family Effects, and Competition. Invariance testing showed that regression weights were not equivalent between the PRC and HK students, though they were among PRC pre-degree and postgraduate students. There were statistically significant differences in factor mean scores between the HK and PRC groups. Conventional Chinese cultural norms were less explanatory of results than the effect of institutional assessment policies and practices in each jurisdiction. Copyright © 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.