Is Test Item Arrangement a Factor in the Academic Achievement of Undergraduate Pharmacy Students in Chemistry?

Abstract

Aims: To determine the effect of test item arrangements in ascending, descending and no consistent order of difficulty in multiple choice tests on undergraduate pharmacy students’ academic achievement in a chemistry course. The present study served as an attempt to relate the effect of test item arrangement on undergraduate pharmacy students’ academic achievement in a chemistry course in Nigerian Universities. Study Design: Quasi-experimental research design of pre-test posttest non-equivalent group design was adopted in carrying out this research. Place and Duration of Study: This study was carried out in ten Nigerian Universities between August, 2020 to April, 2021. Methodology: We sampled 200 participants (111 male, 89 females; age range 16 – 27 years) undergraduate pharmacy students drawn from ten (10) Universities in Nigeria. Twenty undergraduate pharmacy students offering Basic Principle of Chemistry (Chem. 101) were randomly selected from each of the selected universities for the study. Results: The mean scores when test items were arranged in ascending, descending, and no consistent orders of item difficulty were 44.38, 37.85 and 40.13 respectively. Their differential mean scores were 6.53, 2.28 and 4.26 in the same order. This implies that pharmacy students obtained higher scores when test items were arranged in ascending order of difficulty, followed by no consistent order and least in descending order of difficulty. The findings further revealed no significant arrangement by gender interaction effect on undergraduate pharmacy students` performance in the three tests. Conclusion: This study will help pharmacy lecturers in determining the most appropriate test item order which will help the students obtain high scores in any pharmaceutical test. The researchers conducted a quasi-experimental study on the topic as part of their undergraduate curriculum to examine the best test item format that will enhance pharmacy students' academic achievement in a chemistry course.