Assessment of Multiple-Choice Construction Competence Among Public Junior Secondary School Teachers in Edo Central Senatorial District, Nigeria

Abstract

This study assessed multiple-choice construction competence among public junior secondary school teachers in Edo Central Senatorial District, Nigeria. Two research questions were raised and one hypothesis was formulated and tested. This study adopted the descriptive study design. The population of the study covers the six hundred and sixteen (616) Secondary School teachers in all the 69 public secondary schools in Edo Central Senatorial District. The simple random sampling technique was used to select 125 subject head teachers who were drawn as the representative sample to measure teachers’ competence. These subject head teachers cover language subject head teachers, Science subject head teachers, and Art subject head teachers in schools. These subject teachers were draw using purposive sampling because they are like supervising teachers who work hand in hand with the management and school principals on administrative and management related duties. The instrument used was a 20-item survey questionnaire adapted from the work of Kissi (2020). The instrument was used to measure multiple-choice construction competencies and items’ quality among teachers. The test-retest reliability coefficient produced an r-value of 0.74 which shows that the instrument is reliable. Research question 1 was analyzed using mean () while the independent t-test for two sample means was used to test the hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance. Findings revealed that the level of multiple-choice construction competence among public junior secondary school teachers in Edo Central Senatorial District, Nigeria is low and female teachers had higher level of multiple-choice construction competencies than male teachers in secondary schools in the district. It was concluded that sex differences in favour of female teachers, exist in teachers’ multiple-choice construction competencies. It was recommended that the district education administrators from the Local Government Education Council Authorities should place more emphasis on exposing classroom teachers on more practical ways of constructing multiple-choice items especially on how to effectively handle items‟ alternatives. This can be achieved through workshops, or training in test construction.