Construction and Validation of an Achievement Test in Mathematics for Class IX Students

Abstract

The study aimed to construct and validate an Achievement Test in Mathematics for Class IX students. A systematic test-development procedure was followed, comprising test planning, blueprint preparation, item construction, expert review, pilot administration, item analysis, and reliability estimation. The content domain covered 13 units from the NCERT-prescribed Class IX Mathematics curriculum and represented four learning domains: knowledge, understanding, application, and skill. An initial pool of 240 multiple-choice items was prepared in English and translated into Assamese, with bilingual review undertaken to support conceptual and linguistic equivalence. The draft test was administered to 241 Class IX students from six secondary schools in Dhemaji district, Assam, selected through purposive sampling. Item difficulty and discrimination indices were used to identify suitable items. Content validity was examined by five experts in Education, Mathematics pedagogy, and secondary-school Mathematics teaching. The final instrument contained 120 items arranged into four sub-tests of 30 items each. For reliability estimation, the test was administered twice to 312 Class IX students from seven secondary schools at a ten-day interval. The four sub-tests yielded test–retest coefficients ranging from 0.78 to 0.82, while the overall coefficient was 0.79. The Assamese version yielded a coefficient of 0.82, and the correlation between English and Assamese scores was 0.81. The findings provide preliminary evidence of content coverage and temporal stability within the sampled context.