THE DEVELOPMENT OF READING LITERACY TEST FOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS: AN APPLICATION MULTIDIMENSIONAL ITEM RESPONSE THEORY (MIRT)

Abstract

The purposes of this research were 1) to construct and develop the reading literacy test by applying multidimensional Item Response Theory for lower secondary school students, and 2) to verify the quality of such reading literacy test. The participants of the study were 800 Obtained of Mattayomsuksa 1 - 3 of school under Secondary Educational Service Area Office 1 in the first semester of the academic year 2018. They were selected using the multi-stage random sampling. The research instruments were four reading literacy tests. The data were analyzed with the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).

The result showed that 84 of 128 reading literacy test items were qualified by the analysis of CFA. The discriminating powers of parameters were 1) between -1.658 to 1.997 for the first dimension, 2) between -1.164 to 2.031 for the second dimension, and 3) between -1.000 to 2.408 for the third dimension. The study also found that the statistic outcome of the Easiness Intercept (d) was between -1.405 to 0.860. The Multidimensional Discriminative Power (MDISC) was between 0.074 to 3.170. The Multidimensional Difficulty Index (MDIFF) was between -1.251 to 16.234. The reliability of the test was between 0.712 to 0.828.