ASSESSING THE EFFECT OF NUMBER OF OPTIONS ON PSYCHOMETRIC PROPERTIES OF WASSCE MULTIPLE CHOICE MATHEMATICS PAPER IN KATSINA ZONAL EDUCATION QUALITY ASSURANCE, KATSINA STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

This paper assessed the effect of number of options on psychometric properties of the West African Senior School Certificate Examinations (WASSCE) multiple choice mathematics paper in Katsina Zonal Education Quality Assurance Katsina State-Nigeria. The instrument for data collection was 2023 WASSCE Objectives test item. The study employed a repeated measures research design. The total population of this study comprised of seventeen thousand, two hundred and fifty-seven (17,257) mathematics students. A sample size of 378 SSSII students were selected. Simple random sampling technique was employ with proportional sampling technique and Krejcie and Morgan (1970) table for the study. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics and cronbach alpha reliability. The instrument did not go through validation and reliability tests as WASSC examinations are standardized and must have gone through those processes. The Mathematics teachers in the respective sampled schools helped in the administration of the questions to the sampled students. The scored scripts of the students were exposed to item analysis to determine the difficulty, discrimination and distracter indices of those items. The findings showed that the students’ performance is below average, and their academic performance in Mathematics is low. It further revealed that the t-test calculated value is 1.84 while its p-value is 0.67 at alphan level of 0.05 which  showed that  there is no significant difference in the academic performance of students (involved in item analysis) in WASSCE May/June 2023 multiple choice items Mathematics Examination in Katsina Zonal Education Quality Assurance, Katsina State- Nigeria based on gender, school types and school location. Based on the results, it was recommended that the Government should constitute a joint examination evaluation team to ensure that examination items constructed by different examination bodies but for same purposes are of comparable standard and the WASSCE and other examination bodies should ensure that only quality items are developed for assessment.