ASSESSMENT OF PSYCHOMETRIC PROPERTIES OF ONDO STATE MATHEMATICS UNIFIED PROMOTION EXAMINATION USING ITEM RESPONSE THEORY

Abstract

This study established the unidimensionality of Ondo State Unified Promotion Examination in Mathematics, it examined the difficulty and discrimination indices of the Mathematics examination items and also, determined the reliability and validity of the Mathematics Examination items. The study adopted descriptive survey research design. The population of the study consisted of all public Senior Secondary School two (SS II) students in Ondo State for the year 2019/2020 session. The sample consisted of 609 students which were selected using multi-stage sampling procedure. The instrument for data collection was 2019 Ondo State Unified promotion Examination questions in Mathematics which comprised 34 multiple choice test items. The Stout’s test of essential unidimesional, 2 parameter model, and reliability tests were used for the analysis of research questions one, two and three respectively.The findingsrevealed that Ondo State promotion examination Mathematics items violated the assumption of unidimensionality because p<0.05; hence it was multidimensional in nature which implies that the items measured more than a single trait. It was observed that, out of 34 items of Ondo State unified promotion Mathematics examination, 28 items representing 82% were moderately difficult and they discriminated correctly, six items, representing 18%, functioned poorly in terms of discrimination and difficulty indices.The study recommended that teachers should organize more standardized internal examinations such as Mock examinations for their students to adequately prepare them for external examination and the Ondo state government should invest in conferences where examination experts are updated on areas of improvement in item construction.