test takers’ learning motivation and attitude impact on the ept actual test performance

English proficiency test (ept) plays a significant role in attaining higher education in iran. in ept there are different influential factors affecting test results. to present a framework for research, this study aimed at constructing and validating an instrument by which the impact of test takers’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and attitude towards ept on test performance would be discovered. to this end, after undertaking a comprehensive review of the literature and conducting interviews with domain experts on ept, a questionnaire was developed for which the reliability and validity were confirmed. after the quantitative data were collected from 150 ph.d. students of non-english majors through the questionnaire, structural equation modeling (sem) was employed to validate the factor structure of the questionnaire and to examine whether the model fits. the findings showed that, while there was a positive relationship between motivation and test performance, the relationship between extrinsic motivation and test performance was more significant. results further revealed that attitude played a more noticeable role on test performance among the variables of the study. the results of the study have presented a framework for research and highlighted latent dimensions of ept to contribute to test takers and test designers.