Abstract:
This research work was intended to develop and validate an Economics Achievement Test. Related literature to this study showed that Economics in the Senior Secondary Schools is aimed at bringing about desirable behavioural changes which may be overt or covert. Such behavioural changes which are the products of the objectives of the teaching/learning situations need to be quantified and qualified. This cannot be attained without proper evaluation. The study area was Enugu Education Zone of Enugu State from where Six Secondary Schools offering Economics were randomly selected from twenty-six secondary schools in Enugu Education Zone. One thousand and twenty five SS II students were sampled from the selected schools. The researcher postulated four research questions and two hypotheses to guide the study. Based on the research questions and hypotheses, the design and methodology, a table of specification was constructed and used. And a 50-items test was developed based on the level of cognitive ability measured by the test and the draft EAT was validated by experts. The data obtained were analyzed using mean and standard deviation, Kudder-Richardson (KR-20) reliability method. From the results of the analysis, it was found out that: the developed Economics achievement test instrument for Senior Secondary schools has high psychometric properties in terms of facility and discrimination index; the instrument has high reliability index; there was significant difference between the achievement of male and that of female students in Economics at the senior secondary school level in favour of the male students; there was a significant difference in mean achievement between students in schools located in urban areas and those in rural areas in favour of urban students. Based on the findings, recommendations were made and summary and conclusion drawn. The recommendations include the following: the developed Economics achievement test instrument should be used by Economics teachers; the items of the EAT developed should serve as template to develop other achievement instrument in Economics; while using the developed EAT, the influence of gender has to be noted; the influence of school location has to be given adequate considerations when using the EAT.
