- 2022-2023
Item analysis of a physics multiple choice test designed for an orientation course
Tesista: Sara Pittini
Relatore: Maurizio Zani
Correlatore: Matteo Bozzi
Tesi di laurea magistrale – handle 214159
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Abstract:
This thesis work analyses a multiple-choice test consisting of 8 physics items. The test was administered to students doing their fourth and fifth year of high school who were participating in an orientation course offered by Politecnico di Milano and were interested in pursuing engineering studies after high school. The items had a similar structure to the questions found on the engineering entrance exam, allowing students to gauge the level of knowledge required to pass the test. Additionally, the test aimed to address some common misconceptions and conceptual errors among students, enabling the professor teaching the class to emphasize the importance of grasping these concepts while studying physics.
The Classical Test Theory analysis helped us to detect the items or distractors that need revision. Some items needed little modifications to improve the distractors, while one item had a low ability to discriminate between high-archiving and low-archiving students probably due to the high item difficulty. We used the chi-squared test to check the correlation among some factors.
We discovered that students in their fourth year of high school tend to answer correctly to an item more often than students in their fifth year and that men tend to answer an item correctly more often than women.
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