Development And Validation Of Mathematics Test (MT) For Senior Secondary Schools

Abstract

- The purpose of this study was to construct and validate a mathematics test. Five research questions were employed in conducting the study. Test items were constructed and sent to two content specialists who jointly rated the relevance of the MT items. Based on the recommendation of these resource persons, nine to ten items were randomly sampled on each domain specifications and built into the form 1 MT. In a situation where items assessed two or more behaviors, other items constructed to measure the behavior were eliminated. This practice helped to cut down form 1 MT from 100 items to 54. Form 1 MT was face-validated in terms of clarity of words and plausibility of distracter by specialist in educational measurement and evaluation, and mathematics teachers. This MT was also tried tested and the difficulty and distracter indices of the items determined. The form II MT (i.e. 54 items) was administered to 324 students and their response were used in determine the proportions of students who showed mastery. The findings of this study show that the MT II is a valid and reliable instrument. The major implication of these findings is that MT should be used in both formative and summative evaluation of student’s performance in mathematics tests. 20 students scored 46-50 marks, 23 students scored 51-55 marks, 30 students scored 56-60 marks, and 25 students scored 61-65 marks. 22 students scored 66-70 marks, 12 students scored 71-75 marks and 5 students scored 76-80 marks. When these scores (A & B) was plotted in the same graph, two curve was obtained and the point where the two curve intercept is 45%. This become the accepted cut-off for the MT. Coefficient of agreement Po; above shows the measure of the proportion of students for whom the same decision, mastery or non-mastery is made on both administration, i.e. test 1 and test 2 by the raters. In the above table, 2 test was administered to a sample of 324 students and result classified for both test.