ANAGBOGU GERMAN EFFA (Ph.D.)
BICHENE, CAROL EBUTA
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATIONS,
FACULTY OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF CALABAR, NIGERIA.
Abstract.
The study investigated the item discrimination indices of multiple choice test
instruments for senior secondary schools’ mock examinations in Cross River
State-Nigeria, as part of a process for quality assurance, a basis for instrument
appraisal for students’ assessment and feedback. This is so because the quality of
an examination instrument and administration determines the quality of students
output. The population consisted of 14,739 students’ scripts for 2014 mathematics
mock examinations. Systematic sampling technique was used in selecting 1,475
scripts for the study. The researchers did not engage in constructing any
instrument as the study was aimed at validating the Mock Examinations
instrument developed and administered by Cross River State Ministry of
Education. Thus, the researchers visited Cross River State Ministry of Education,
collected 2014 Mathematics Mock Examinations Multiple choice and marked
scripts, all fully adopted for the study. The instrument consisted of 50 items, with 4
options each, one of which is the correct answer and the other three distracters.
Item analysis procedure was applied to determine discrimination indices. Results
of the analysis showed that; discrimination indices for most items in the
instrument were inconsistent with recommendation in extant literature. From the
results of the study, it was concluded that the State Ministry of Education’s level of
quality assurance in developing multiple choice items for senior secondary Mock
Examinations was seen to be poor. The implications of this results is that the test
instrument is of poor quality thus, it was recommended that test experts should
always be recruited to assist in development and creation of an item bank to
enable a dependable administration of Mock Examinations instruments in Cross
River State.
Keywords: discrimination, test instrument, students’ assessment and feedback, quality assurance.
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