<b>Establishment of reliability and norms for a mathematics achievement test for secondary school II students in Ebonyi State, Nigeria</b>

Abstract

The quality of education in Ebonyi State has been a concern for stakeholders because students' performance in mathematics has been inconsistent due to a lack of standardized and validated assessment tools to measure students' mathematics achievement. Existing tests often lack reliability and validity, making it challenging to accurately assess students' knowledge and skills in mathematics. Establishing a stable and normed mathematics achievement test (MAT) is essential to address this issue. By adopting an instrumentation research design, a sample of 400 secondary students out of 20,874 secondary school students in Ebonyi State was drawn for the study. The researcher developed a draft 60-item MAT using our developed blueprint. A pilot study was conducted after which the test was reduced to 50-items. This was used for the main fieldwork to determine the psychometric properties of the test and establish the norms for the test. The content validity of the test was determined using a goodness-of-fit test, the reliability was established using the K-R 20 approach and test-retest approach, while the norms were established using Mean and Standard deviation. Results showed a significant congruence between the test blueprint and the actual test items. The test also yielded appreciably high internal consistency and stability indices. We concluded that the items of the MAT have a significant correspondence with the test blueprint and that the MAT has high internal consistency (0.90). The items of the MAT have a significant correspondence with the test blueprint, the MAT also has a high stability index (0.87), and the established norms for junior and senior classes are 55.11 and 68.77, respectively.