Development of the arithmetic subtest of the school achievement test-second edition

Abstract

The School Achievement Test (Teste de Desempenho Escolar, TDE) has been widely used in clinical and educational contexts for the past 22 years. Arithmetic disorders are frequent among children and teenagers, requiring new and updated tasks to assess as accurately as possible school achievement. The last decade has witnessed a growing recognition of the need for significant changes in educational assessment practices. Evidence provided by item response theory (IRT) enabled the link of more detailed information improving assessment quality. The aim of this study was to develop a revised and completely updated version of the Arithmetic Subtest for the School Achievement Test-Second Edition (Teste de Desempenho Escolar-Segunda Edição, TDE-II). To this end, two studies were conducted. The first study focused on item and test construction, while the second study assessed the preliminary version of the instrument. The sample consisted of 302 students in grades 1 through 9 recruited from public and private schools. Factor analysis revealed two factors which explained 74 % of the variance in the data. Both dimensions were closely related to item complexity and difficulty. The subtest was therefore divided into two versions: one for students in grades 1 through 5 and the other for those in grades 6 through 9. Both versions were analyzed based on IRT models, which suggested that the items provided a comprehensive measure of the latent trait. The results provided satisfactory evidence of internal structure and reliability. Results indicated that the Arithmetic Subtest of the TDE-II has adequate psychometric properties for the assessment of arithmetic skills in primary education. Interpretation based on IRT analyses can be helpful for future studies about math education, discriminating even better between learning difficulty and typical groups, with the data to be the basis of math cognition stimulation programs.