Content Validation of Basic Education Certificate Examination Questions in Basic Science in Adamawa State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study assessed the content validation of Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) questions in Basic Science set by Adamawa State Educational Resource Centre (ERC), Yola, Nigeria. This was to determine the representativeness of the topics and their levels of the cognitive domain in the Junior Secondary School Basic Science curriculum in the Basic Education Certificate Examination in Basic Science question papers from 2013 to 2017. Document analysis research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study comprised all past Basic Education Certificate Examination questions in Basic Science. The research instrument used for the data collection was a designed checklist along table of specification. A pilot study was conducted and a reliability index of 0.86 was obtained using Cronbach alpha analysis. Three research questions were raised with two hypotheses tested at 0. 05 level of significance. The result of the findingp=0.000 revealed that there is no significant difference between the topics in the Basic Science curriculum and those examined in the Basic Education Certificate Examination questions in Basic Science. Again, the result 0.675 showed that there is significant difference between the weights assigned to the various levels of cognitive domain in the Basic Science curriculum and those weights assigned to them in Basic Education Certificate Examination Basic Science question papers. Based on the findings, it was recommended that re-training, workshops, conferences and seminars should be organized for Basic Science teachers and external examiners regularly to update their knowledge on test construction.