Development and Analysis of an Item Pool: Assessing Students’ Mathematical Conceptual Attainment

Many students find mathematics difficult, and a lack of mathematical conceptual understanding is one of the key reasons. Assessing students’ conceptual knowledge helps in identifying their specific challenges in a particular topic. We develop a conceptual attainment test instrument to measure students’ conceptual level in four mathematical topics at the secondary school level. The instrument consists of fifty-five multiple-choice questions (MCQ) and thirty true or false questions framed based on three lower levels of Bloom’s taxonomy of learning. The purpose of this study is to develop the instrument, identify item characteristics, and determine its validity and reliability. The data was collected by random sampling from 124 students studying in ninth and tenth grades from two schools. The item analysis was done based on classical test theory, and the reliability of the items was found by calculating Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. The overall findings led to the final item bank of fifty MCQ and fifteen true or false with Cronbach’s alpha value 0.810, indicating high internal consistency reliability. This item bank can be used for formative assessment to test grade 9th students’ conceptual understanding of each topic separately.