Concurrent Validity of the Senior School Certificate Examinations Chemistry Items in Nigeria
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Abstract
The study utilised the scores of examinees in WAEC and NECO Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) chemistry items under CTT and IRT. Non-experimental design of descriptive research type was adopted. The population was 36,182 students that registered for 2017/2018 WAEC SSCE Chemistry in Osun State. Two instruments were used to collect data; Chemistry Achievement Test Types I and II which were the adopted versions of May/June WAEC and June/July NECO Paper I 2015 respectively. A sample of 1,105 students was randomly selected. Simple random sampling was used to select 5 from 10 Local Governments Areas in the 3 senatorial districts in Osun State. Purposive sampling procedure was used to select two co-educational (one public and one private) from each LGA (30 schools) and two co-educational Federal unity schools. Data were analyzed using CTT and IRT methods of scoring, mean, standard deviation, correlation matrix and scatter plots. Result indicated that students approximated scores were high in WAEC Chemistry Items (WCI) using IRT (=22.23, SD=9.88) compared to CTT (=19.65, SD=8.15). While students approximated scores in NECO Chemistry Items (NCI), using IRT was high (=26.95, SD=11.69) compared to CTT ( = 24.55, SD = 9.32). Also, moderate correlation exists between scores of examinees’ in WCI and NCI under IRT (0.61) and CTT (0.63). The study concluded that there was a fair concurrent validity between scores of examinees in these examinations under IRT and CTT. The study recommended that IRT method be utilise for scoring items and concurrent validity in item validation.
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