Achievement test

Achievement test is tool for teachers for evaluation of students in school situation. With the help of achievement test we can measure the amount of success of an individual in specific field. In school environment it is used as an instrument to measure success of an individual in particular subject or group of subjects. It gives the knowledge about what an individual acquire by testing his abilities.

Definitions

Achievement test is the tool which helps in measures the capacities and capabilities of an individual. It is also helpful in upgrading the standard of education in an energetic way so that the individual can see with their own eyes that what they achieve by their past learning.

Some of the definitions of achievement test are given below.

According to Waters, “Achievement test act as useful aids in diagnosing the student’s specific learning needs for identifying his relative strengths and weaknesses”.

According to Super, “An achievement test or proficiency test is used to ascertain what and how much has been learnt or how well a task can performed”.

According to Free Man, “Achievement test is a test designed to measure knowledge, understanding and skills in a specified subject or a group of subjects”.

According to N.M. Downie, “Any test that measures the attainments or accomplishments of an individual after period of training or learning is called achievement test. It helps to permute the student to next class.”

Construction and standardization of an achievement test

Construction: For constructing achievement test in any school subject. Following two question are gives a way to construct the achievement test.

a.     What to measure?

b.     How to measure?

a.     What to measure involves certain objectives in view that enables to bring accepted changes in the students behavior when we teach.

b.     How to measure involves how to construct an instrument that measures the abilities of students.

Standardization: Standardization is the process of high qualities and deep understanding of subject matter. Standardization test specifies the directions for administrating and scoring the test on different groups of individuals like whom that the test is designed. Standard content develops the procedure for identical test on individuals in different places and at different times.

General principles or steps for construction of achievement test

Following are the steps for constructing an achievement test.

1.     Planning the test

a.     Designing the test

b.     Preparation of blue print

2.     Preparing Preliminary draft

a.     Item writing

b.     Item editing

c.      Pre try out

3.     The try out

4.     Item analysis

5.     Preparing the final draft

6.     Establishment of

a.     Reliability

b.     Validity

c.      Norms

Description of all above steps is described below briefly.

1.     Planning the test: Planning of achievement test will be carried out with the help of two steps.

a.     Designing of test

Designing is most important step in the building test. Designer should be careful about planning and making test successful. He should keep this in mind that how and what types of questions are used. He has to decide weightage for different objectives and units in the course. Following points helps designer to design test in systematic way.

i.                    Identification of objectives

ii.                  Measurement of content

iii.                Allotment of time

iv.                Allotment of marks

v.                  Include multiple choice question

vi.                Emphasis on each subject and area of question

b.     Preparation of blueprint

After designing preparation of blueprint is the last stage of the planning of test. Here test constructor put various type of question in blueprint and allots them marks depending on the time. The tester writes down his decisions in the form of a blueprint.

Following figure is the example of blueprint.

With the completion of blueprint the remaining decisions of the design will become the basis for writing the items.

2.     Preliminary draft

Preliminary draft is prepared by following three stages.

a.    Item writing: It is important step in preliminary draft and here blue print is used as a guide writing this draft. Test conductor should have following points in mind when he writes items for preliminary draft.

i.                    Each item contains single idea.

ii.                  Questions should be clear.

iii.                Simple and easy to understand.

iv.               Double barreled question should be avoided.

v.                 Arrangement of items should be from simple to complex.

vi.               Subjective question should also be avoided.

b.     Item editing:  Then the item should be edited and reviewed by language teacher and also by experts of measurement. Language teacher will check the errors in language and defect in words. By removing defects it is submitting to experts. Experts of measurement measure the level of achievement of items.

c.      Pre try out: The draft is modified and remove the shortcomings of preliminary draft. In this stage constructer is confident for the usability of test.

3.     The try out

To ensure the proper operating of test items and to remove shortcoming, it is essential to have try out of items. This helps in predict how students will work in actual practices.

At the try out stage, the test should be so timed that nearly 90% of the sample should be able to attempt all the items of the test. The test sheets alongwith answer sheets are collected and answer sheets are used for scoring with the help of scoring keys. Keep following points in mind while testing in sample.

i.                    Proper sitting arrangements.

ii.                  Time of administrating the test.

iii.                Total time required for test.

iv.                Proper motivation with the pupil.

4.     Item analysis

In this stage test constructer examining the responses of respondents in the sample to each test item. It can also be define as it is a statistical procedure by which the appropriate items are selected for the final draft and poor items are rejected. Item analysis is an analysis of responses made to ‘teacher made tests’ by the pupil in the class.

5.     Final draft

In the final draft questions should be arranged in such way that easy, average and difficult and again starts from easy and so on. By doing this student at least go through whole test because he know that some of remaining questions are easy. When the test is arranged properly with the help of principles, a clear identity of test is appeared.

6.     Establishment of Reliability, Validity and Norms

With the selection of good items final draft has been prepared and the final step is the establishment of reliability, validity and norms. These test items administered to a larger sample.

a.     Reliability:  The reliability of a test measures whatever it measure. There are many methods for computing the reliability of a test and the most appropriate method for computing reliability of achievement test is Split-half method.

b.     Validity: It is very important aspect of test and it can be determined as the degree which is capable of measuring achievements and it is design to do so. Valid test is highly reliable. Validity is measured by four methods.

i.                    Face validity

ii.                  Content validity

iii.                Concurrent validity

iv.                Predictive validity  

c.      Norms: It is average score of sample population. These are the level obtained by a particular group of persons on a test. There are many types of norms like age norms, grade norms, percentile norms and standard scores.