Determination of Differential Functioning, Difficulty and Discriminating Indices and Students’ Performance in 2023 BECE Multiple-Choice Test

Patience Odu, Ekwonna Lilian

Abstract


The study investigated the rate of items response (IR), differential functioning (DF), of students’ performance, difficulty and discriminative indices of 2023, Mathematics multiple choice test used in Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) in Delta State. Four research questions guided the study which were answered using percentage, difficulty and discriminative indices formula. The instrument was 60 multiple-choice test items adopted from the 2023 BECE in Delta State. The population of the study comprised 140,959 upper basic three students from public secondary schools. The sample size of 1000 upper basic three students were drawn from the population using multi-stage sampling technique. The multi-triangulation research design was utilized. The instrument was administered to the students by the researcher and the researcher assistants. The study discovered the following findings: (1) The incidence of IR, DF issues in 2023 BECE test items was low with only about 5% of items indicating significant concern (2) The items have difficulty indices ranging from 0.31 to 0.55 and the estimated discriminative indices ranged from 0.34 to 0.67 and (3) There were similarity in performance of male and female students. Based on these findings the following recommendations were made among others: teachers should identify the items response, differential functioning in order to establish the psychometric properties of test items designed by them. 


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