• Open Access

Dividing the Force Concept Inventory into two equivalent half-length tests

Jing Han, Lei Bao, Li Chen, Tianfang Cai, Yuan Pi, Shaona Zhou, Yan Tu, and Kathleen Koenig
Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 11, 010112 – Published 4 May 2015

Abstract

The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) is a 30-question multiple-choice assessment that has been a building block for much of the physics education research done today. In practice, there are often concerns regarding the length of the test and possible test-retest effects. Since many studies in the literature use the mean score of the FCI as the primary variable, it would be useful then to have different shorter tests that can produce FCI-equivalent scores while providing the benefits of being quicker to administer and overcoming the test-retest effects. In this study, we divide the 1995 version of the FCI into two half-length tests; each contains a different subset of the original FCI questions. The two new tests are shorter, still cover the same set of concepts, and produce mean scores equivalent to those of the FCI. Using a large quantitative data set collected at a large midwestern university, we statistically compare the assessment features of the two half-length tests and the full-length FCI. The results show that the mean error of equivalent scores between any two of the three tests is within 3%. Scores from all tests are well correlated. Based on the analysis, it appears that the two half-length tests can be a viable option for score based assessment that need to administer tests quickly or need to measure short-term gains where using identical pre- and post-test questions is a concern.

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  • Received 22 July 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.11.010112

This article is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Jing Han1, Lei Bao1,2,*, Li Chen1,3, Tianfang Cai2, Yuan Pi4, Shaona Zhou5, Yan Tu3,†, and Kathleen Koenig6,‡

  • 1The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA
  • 2Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China
  • 3Southeast University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210096, China
  • 4Central China Normal University, Wuhan, Hubei 430079, China
  • 5South China Normal University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510631, China
  • 6University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio 45220, USA

  • *bao.15@osu.edu
  • tuyan@seu.edu.cn
  • koenigkn@ucmail.uc.edu

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Vol. 11, Iss. 1 — January - June 2015

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