Development and Validation of an Instrument for Assessing Basic Electronics Process Skills in Secondary Schools in Lagos State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study was carried out to develop and validate an instrument for assessing basic electronics process skills in senior secondary schools. Six research questions guided the study while three null hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study adopted instrumentation design and was carried out in Lagos State, Nigeria. The population for the study was 188 subjects made up of 158 basic electronic students and the 30 teachers who taught basic electronics in the 25 senior secondary schools that offered basic electronics as a subject up to senior secondary three level during the 2014/2015 school year. The sample size for the study was 30 which comprised five teachers of basic electronics and 25 senior secondary III students that offered basics electronics in Federal Science and Technical College, (FSCT) Yaba, Lagos State. Purposive sampling technique was used to select FSCT Yaba Lagos State. Basic electronics process skills assessment instrument was used as instrument for data collection for the study. The instrument was face validated by five experts while content validation was carried out using a table of specifications based on Simpson’s model of psychomotor domain in the area of measuring and testing, construction of electronic analysis after which six skill items in five tasks were discarded. Based on the result of the validation processes basic electronics process skills assessment instrument made up of 32 tasks and 239 process skills was developed. The developed instrument was employed in assessing 25 SS III students of basic electronics students in Federal Science and Technical College, Yaba. Five teachers of basic electronic were employed as raters for observing and rating the students as they carried out the given tasks. The internal consistency of the basic electronics process skill assessment instrument was then determined using Cronbach alpha reliability method and a reliability coefficient of 0.72 operation and 0.69 for fault tracing operation, with 0.77 as the overall reliability coefficient for the instrument. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was employed to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. It was found out that there was no significant difference in the mean scores of the ability groups (high, average and low ability). The interrater reliability coefficient of the developed instrument was 0.75 and there was a high degree of agreement among all the five raters used in the study. It was recommended that the relevant external examination bodies should include process skills assessment in their examination scheme for certification of the students in basic electronics. The study also recommended that government should organize seminars and workshops for teachers of basic electronics on how to make use of the developed basic electronics process skills assessment instrument. It was further recommended that equipment, materials and funding that would facilitate the use of the basic electronics process skills assessment instrument in senior secondary schools should be provided by stakeholders including the government and parents’ teachers’ associations.