Assessment of dimensionality and local independence of state and national basic education Certificate Examinations in National values Education in Benue State

Abstract

The study compared dimensionality and local independence of Basic Education Certificate Examinations (BECE) National Values Education 2017 test items by Benue State Examinations Board (BSEB) and National Examinations Council (NECO). The study is non-experimental design of Ex-post facto research type, a proportionate to size sampling technique was used to select 48 secondary schools (32 state public and 16 NECO-BECE registered schools), 1500 JSS3 students were randomly selected. BSEB and NECO BECE 2017 National %lues Education multiple choice test items were adopted as research instruments. Data were collected through personal visit to sampled schools. Two research questions were raised and analyzed using linear factor analysis and correlation residual NOHARM and Yén Q 3 software. Findings revealed that BSEB BECE 2017 National VI lues Education test fulfilled the assumption of Unidimensionality, while two dimensions underlie NECO test, which accounted for variations in examinees' performance. Also, out of 45 items for each test, 6 items of BSEB and 12 items of NECO test local independence assumption (correlation residual values ?0.2). The public examining bodies and test developers should adopt IRT approach as used in this study for standardization of test items to ensure quality assessment of basic education in Nigeria.