Development and Validation of Physics Achievement Test (PAT) to measure Conceptual Understanding of 9th Grade Students

Abstract

Conceptual understanding is related with connected and operational network of thoughts. The main objective of the study was the development and validation of a Physics Achievement Test (PAT) to measure the conceptual understanding of 9th Graders. PAT was comprised of MCQs based test on first three levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. First step was content selection & its alignment with Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs). In Second step, Content validity was ensured through Content Validity Ratio (CVI) and Content Validity Index (CVI). Third step was specification of marks. In fourth step, PAT was pilot tested on 376, 9th grade science students. In fifth step, different quality statistics like Difficulty Index, Discrimination Power and Reliability were also computed. Initially, there were 84 items while final test was reduced to 75 items. Consequently, the results affirmed that PAT has adequate verifications of being valid and reliable to measure the conceptual understanding of 9th Graders.