A Development Analytical Ability Test for Mattayomkuksa III Students

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to construct and develop an analytical
thinking ability test for Mattayomsuksa III students, which was then analyzed by
item difficulty, discrimination, reliability and determine differential item function.
The sample consisted of 803 to 935 Mattayomsuksa III students and between the
academic years 2009 and 2011 from government schools of the office of the basic
education commission in the central and provincial area. The research instruments
were six analytical thinking ability tests. The results are the following : 1) The item
parameters of the tests using the item response theory method were the
following: the discrimination parameter (a) ranged from .116 to 3.659, difficulty
parameter (b) ranged from -2.626 to 4.957, the guessing parameter (c) ranged from
0.045 to 0.396, the information function values for Test B and D were the hightest
at approximately 2.0 and for the Test F the lowest at 0.50 of Test F. Furthermore,
the reliability of the tests using the Kuder-Richarson 20 ranged from 0.6060 to
0.8146. 2) The differential item functioning in the tests was 13 percent of total
items, with male students having more opportunity responses than female
students.