The impact of item position in multiple-choice test on student performance at the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) Level

Abstract

The study investigated the impact of item position in multiple-choice test on student performance at the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) level. The sample consisted of 810 JSS 3 students selected from 12 different schools. A quasi-experimental design was used. Students for the project were drawn from schools representing public and private schools in urban and rural areas. The instrument for the project was a multiple-choice test consisting of 40 items in each of English Language, Mathematics and Science. The items were arranged using the difficulty order to obtain the three treatments i.e. Random (RDM), Easy-to-Hard (ETH) and Hard-to-Easy (HTE). The data collected were subjected to statistical analysis using ANOVA at p ≤ 0.05. The results of the analysis indicate that for English Language,Mathematics and Science at the BECE level, when item order was altered, the difference in performance was generally significant. However, there was no significant difference in performance between the ETH and HTE treatments of English Language. Similarly, there was no significant difference in performance between the RDM and ETH, and RDM and HTE of Science. The results for Mathematics were consistent, in that significant difference in performance was observed between all the three treatments for the subject. The study led to the conclusion that the proposition of using reordering of format of an objective test to curb examination malpractice may not be the best after all especially in English Language, Mathematics and Science at the BECE level. It was therefore recommended that other methods should be investigated for the purpose.