Comparism of Item Difficulty and Discrimination of Pre And Post University Entrance Examinations in Nigeria

Authors : Adamu Chidubem DEBORAH, Babatimehin TEMİTOPE, Adeoye OLUSEYİ PETER

Pages : 1-9

View : 11 | Download : 7

Publication Date : 2021-01-01

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :The study compared the difficulty and discrimination indices of the Pre-University Tertiary Matriculation Examination insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(Pre-UTME); and Post-University Tertiary Matriculation Examination insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(Post-UTME); in the related subject areas of Arts, Commercial and Science in Obafemi Awolowo University insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(O.A.U.);, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. The study adopted the exploratory survey research design. The population for the study comprised all part one undergraduate students of the O.A.U., Ile-Ife in 2013/2014 session. While simple random sampling technique was used to select 40 departments, convenience sampling technique was used in drawing 20 part one undergraduate students from each of the 40 departments. A 20-item achievement test titled: 2013/2014 Pre-UTME and its corresponding 2013/2014 O.A.U. Post-UTME were instruments used for collecting data for this study. Data collected were subjected to item analysis. Results revealed that the items of the O.A.U.’s 2013/2014 in the subject areas of Arts, Commercial and Science insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(with average difficulty indices, p, of 0.53, 0.46 and 0.55 respectively); were more difficult than items of the 2013/2014 Pre-UTME in the same subject areas insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(having average p of 0.62, 0.54 and 0.60 respectively);. Finally, the results revealed that the items of the 2013/2014 Pre-UTME and O.A.U.’s Post-UTME in the subject areas of Arts, Commercial and Science discriminated appropriately between students in the high scoring group and those in the low scoring group with average discrimination indices of 0.45, 0.43, 0.46 and 0.46, 0.43, 0.42 respectively.
Keywords : Item difficulty, item discrimination, jamb, pre Utme and post Utme