Evaluation of Differential Item Functioning of Basic education certificate examination (BECE) Mathematics Items in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria

Abstract

Differential Item Functioning (DIF) of multiple-choice test is a potential bias source in measurement, which can be misleading in any evaluation process. Therefore, it is pertinent to identify DIF in testing involving multiple-choice items. The descriptive survey design was adopted to study the differential item functioning of 2020 Basic Certificate Examination (BECE) Mathematics multiple-choice items. The study population consisting of 19,560 Junior Secondary three (JSS3) students, who registered and sat for the 2019/2020 BECE in Akwa Ibom State. From the population, 1,956 students were selected from 530 secondary schools using multistage sampling procedure. Three research questions were raised and subjected to item differential functioning analysis. The result showed that fourteen items out of 50 items functioned differentially with respect to gender. The result also revealed that sixteen items out of 50 items functioned differently with respect to school location, while 22 items functioned differently with respect to school ownership. It was recommended that, DIF analysis should be incorporated in educational assessment so as to obtain valid psychometric properties of test and valid educational assessment. Also, examination bodies and test developers should promote analysis of test items bias for every fixed response test.