Abstract
Many scholars have posed a strong argument regarding the effect of test items arrangement on student performances. While some argue that such arrangement does not have any serious effects on students score, others have maintained that such a sensitive aspect of test construction cannot be entirely exonerated from the total outcome of students score. This study investigated students’ performance with mathematics test items arranged in bottom-top (descending order of difficulty) and variation in items numbering (VIN) formats. With a quasi-experimental research design, two research questions with associated two null hypotheses guided the investigations. From a population of 52,695 Senior Secondary School two (SS2) students, multistage with simple random sampling techniques was adopted to select 900 participants from 18 intact classes of 50 students each. A test blueprint was added as a guide to construct a 60 objective items Mathematics Achievement Test (MAT) which was used for data collection. MAT was validated by experts in Mathematics and test experts from Measurement and Evaluation. It has reliability indices K = 0.82 and r = 0.79, established using Cohen’s Kappa (K) procedure and Kuder Richardson formula 20 (KR20), respectively. Mean score differences and t-test were used for data analyses. Result indicated that arrangements with variation in items numbering (VIN) has significant positive effect on examinees performance in Mathematics while bottom-top had negative effect. It was recommended that as much as possible, bottom-top format should be avoided for its negative consequences as revealed from the study. Arrangement based on variation in item numbering is highly recommended for its merit of positive effect and inhibition of examination sharp practices by students.