PSYCHOMETRIC EFFECT OF THE NUMBER OF MULTIPLE CHOICE RESPONSE OPTIONS ON SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ PERFORMANCE IN ECONOMICS TEST (A CASE OF ITU L.G.A, AKWA-IBOM STATE, NIGERIA)

The study investigated the Psychometric effect of multiple choice response item options on secondary school students’ Performance in Economics Test. The population for this study consists of all senior secondary school students in Itu L.G.A of Akwa-Ibom State, Nigeria. 3x3x2 Schematic type of Quasi-experimental design was used for this study. A sample of three hundred (300) students from Six Senior Secondary Schools was selected through a simple random sampling technique. The instrument is an adopted Economics Achievement Test (EAT) with 5 option format type and an adapted format type with 4 and 3 options each with fifty items. Each instrument has its reliability co-efficient value (r) as 0.81, 0.79 and 0.85 respectively. The difficulty and discrimination indices for the options were determined while the use of student t-test analysis was used to test the research hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance. The formulated hypotheses were all rejected. It was found that the use of three option type saves time on the part of the test developer and marking process and ensures adequate content of the subject. It was concluded that during evaluation exercises, test experts should adopt the use of three-option formats as against the conventional four and fiveoption type. The study recommended that test experts who are charged with the responsibility of developing standardized tests should put into practice, a more evaluative measure to address the issue of guessing especially as it concerns Economics objective test.