Title:
PSYCHOMETRIC PROPERTIES OF MAY/JUNE 2017 AND 2018 WAEC, NECO AND NABTEB PHYSICS MULTIPLE CHOICE TEST ITEMS

Authors:
Prof. N. Agu and Obidiebube, Audrey Nnenna * ,Nigeria

Abstract:
The purpose of the study was to compare the psychometric properties of May/June 2017 and 2018 WAEC, NECO and NABTEB physics multiple choice test items. Six research questions guided the study. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. The population of this study comprised all the 5,748 SS 3 students who enrolled for 2018/2019 physics senior school certificate examination of WAEC, NECO and NABTEB in Anambra State. The multi-stage sampling and simple random sampling techniques were used to select 800 students. WAEC, NECO and NABTEB 2017 and 2018 May/June Physics multiple choice examination questions were used as instruments for data collection. The instruments were collected from the respective examination bodies’ zonal offices, thus, proving to be valid and reliable. Percentage was used to analyze data to answer the research questions. The major findings of the study indicated among other that NECO had the highest percentage of acceptable difficulty index, followed by WAEC then NABTEB in 2017 while in 2018 WAEC had the highest percentage of difficulty index, followed by NABTEB then NECO. The findings also revealed that the percentage of acceptable discriminative indices of the three examining bodies, it is evident that WAEC had the highest acceptable discrimination index followed by NABTEB then NECO in 2017 while in 2018 WAEC had the highest percentage of acceptable discrimination index followed by NABTEB then NECO. Comparing the percentage of good distracter index among the three examination bodies, it is evident that NABTEB had the highest, followed by WAEC then NECO in 2017 while in 2018 WAEC had the highest, followed by NECO then NABTEB in 2018. It was therefore recommended among others that, Examination bodies such as WAEC, NECO and NABTEB should mount regular trainings/workshops/seminars and brief sessions for item writers, moderators, supervisors and examiners to update their knowledge in test construction.