The Development of a Three-tier Chemical Bonding Concept Test

Abstract

The aim of this study was to develop a three-tier concept test to determine high school students' conceptual understanding in terms of chemical bonding, and at implementing a reliability and validity study for the test. A total of 175 high school students participated in the research. A three-tier test of 15 questions was employed in the study. Expert opinion was consulted for content and face validity. Furthermore, false positive and false negative values were also calculated for content validity, and on average these values were found to be less than 10%. Statistical analyses were performed for construct validity; Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient was calculated as 0.74. To perform item analysis, the top 27% of the students and the bottom 27% of the students were determined. As a result, it was found that item difficulty indices ranged between .47 and .77, and that the discrimination indices were above .30. Following the analyses, both item difficulty indices and discrimination indices were found to be adequate. At the end of the study, Chemical Bonding Concept Test was considered to be reliable and valid.