Comparison of The Content Validity of 2018 Mathematics Test Items of Public Examining Bodies in Nigeria

Abstract

Although in Nigeria, there are many public examining bodies, the two major public examining bodies that conduct senior secondary school certificate examinations are the West African Examinations Council [WAEC] and National Examinations Council [NECO]) in Nigeria. There are arguments about the equivalence of the senior secondary school certificates being awarded by the two major public examining bodies. This is because in most subjects, including mathematics, being examined the distribution of test items of the two public examining bodies are not equal in terms of number and spread across the various levels of cognitive domain. In order to add to literature, this study was designed to compare 2018 WAEC and 2018 NECO SSSCE Multiple-choice Mathematics test items. The comparison covered the content coverage, the distributions of items across the themes in the mathematics curriculum which are Number and Numeration, Algebraic processes, Geometry, Statistics and Introductory Calculus, and how the items were distributed across the various levels of the cognitive domain of Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives (knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation). Although NECO set more test items than WAEC, there was no statistically significant difference in the content validity of the mathematics tests of the two public examining bodies. However, NECO should reduce the five-option response format of A, B, C, D and E to four-response format of A, B, C, and D being used by WAEC.