<p>ALLAIN, ASHLEY. Development of an Instrument to Measure Proportional Reasoning Among Fast-Track Middle School Students. (Under the direction of North Carolina State University Graduate Faculty). The purpose of the study was to develop a reliable and valid instrument for measuring proportional reasoning among fast-track middle school girls in Wake County, North Carolina. The study sample consisted of 70 girls who attended the summer 2000 Girls on Track program at Meredith College located in Raleigh, North Carolina. The grade level for each of the participants ranged from 6th grade through 8th grade for the 2000-2001 school year. The instrument used in this study is the Proportional Reasoning Assessment Instrument. This instrument was developed by the researcher and is based upon problems discussed in relevant literature. The test items chosen include missing value, comparison, mixture, associated sets, part-part-whole, graphing and scale problems. The instrument is comprised of 10 open-ended items of varying difficulty levels. Data were analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences Version 10.0 (SPSS) and EXCEL. A four-point grading rubric was used to score each test item. Two measure of internal consistency were calculated to determine reliability: Chrombach?s coefficient alpha and inter-rater reliability. A panel of experts examined the test instrument for the qualities of relevance, balance, and specificity to establish content validity. Criterion validity was established through determining the correlation between students? scores on the Proportional Reasoning Assessment Instrument and the students? scores on the North Carolina End-of-Grade exam. A detailed item analysis was performed including item difficulty, item discrimination, item means, item variances, and inter-item correlations.Results from the study reveal the Proportional Reasoning Assessment Instrument is a reliable and valid test instrument for measuring proportional reasoning among fast-track middle school girls. In addition, the instrument revealed common misconceptions among the students in the sample. The overall coefficient alpha is and inter-rater agreement was 96%. The average difficulty is and the average discrimination is . Each test item contributed to the central purpose of the instrument due to the absence of negative discrimination indices.<P>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NCSU/oai:NCSU:etd-20010417-144134 |
| Date | 18 April 2001 |
| Creators | Allain, Ashley |
| Contributors | Dr. Sarah Beenson, Dr. Jacquelin Dietz, Dr. Karen Dawkins, Dr. Hollylynne Drier |
| Publisher | NCSU |
| Source Sets | North Carolina State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/theses/available/etd-20010417-144134 |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to NC State University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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