Development and Validation of Diagnostic Economics Test for Secondary Schools

Abstract

A diagnostic test in economics to aid the teachers determine student’s specific weak content areas was developed andvalidated. Five research questions guided the study. Preliminary validation was done by two experienced teachersin the content area of secondary economics and two experts in test construction. The pilot testing was conducted forgrammatical checking and compatibility bench marking while the test was try-out tested for item analysis. Theoverall number of test items was 83. The test difficulty indices ranged from 0.24 to 0.79 and discrimination indiceswere within 0.22 to 0.65. The content validity index for the 83 items was 0.76 and the Kappa statistic reliabilityvalue of the test was 0.83. The test was found to be of good quality, valid and highly reliable. The test is thereforerecommended for identifying specific mastered and least learned content areas in economics in Nigeria, South Africaand other countries with emerging economies.