A Construction of Reading Literacy Test for Grade 3 Students in Bangkok Metropolitan Administration School

Abstract

Background and Aims: Important skills in learning Thai that can be applied effectively in daily life. But the skill that is necessary in everyday life is reading because reading is an important tool used for communication. Knowing how to practice regularly will help readers have a foundation for good reading. Both will help to gain expertise and have extensive knowledge. Thus, the objectives of this research are as follows; 1) to construct a reading literacy test and verify the quality of classical test theory 2) to verify the quality of item response theory 3) to study the reading literacy skill of grade 3 students in the Bangkok metropolitan administration school.

Methodology: The sample used in the research was 700 students in grade 3. The research instrument was a reading literacy test according to the PISA test that measures the competency to locate information, understand evaluate, and reflect. The reading literacy test consists of multiple-choice and essay a total of 15 questions. The verification of the quality of reading literacy tests by classical test theory and item response theory with the Generalized Partial Credit Model (G-PCM) and verified reading literacy by mean and standard deviation.

Results: (1) Reading literacy test consisted of 5 situations and a total of 60 questions showed the content validity was in the range of 0.80-1.00 and the quality by classical test theory showed the difficulty was in the range of 0.43 to 0.79, the discriminant was in the range of 0.30 to 0.75 and reliability was in the range 0.89 and 0.87. (2) The quality of reading literacy test by item response theory with the G-PCM model showed that the discrimination parameter (α_i) was in the range of 0.95 to 2.50. the difficulty parameter (δ_ij) δ₁ was in the range of -0.64 to -0.08 and δ​₂ was in the range of 0.08 to 0.64. The item information of 3 competencies had the highest ability level (θ) equal to -1.2, -0.4, and -0.4, and the most information of 3 competencies had the highest ability level (θ) equal to -0.8, -0.8, and -0.43. And (3) Results of the study of reading literacy showed that most of the students have a high level of reading literacy.

Conclusion: The tests created were appropriate and of good quality according to the index of consistency (IOC) ranging from 0.80-1.00, with the difficulty of the test and the discriminatory power in the range of 0.43-0.79 and 0.30-0.75, respectively. In addition, Quality checking with the G-PCM model showed appropriate parameters and found that Grade 3 students had high reading proficiency in all competencies.