Analysis of Linear Equating in WAEC, NECO, and NABTEB Senior School Certificate Multiple-Choice Economics Examinations in North West, Nigeria

Abstract

This paper investigated the analysis of linear equating method on WAEC, NECO, and NABTEB Senior School Certificate Multiple-Choice Economics Examinations in Northwest Nigeria. The “Non-Equivalent Anchor Test (NEAT) group Design” was adopted for this study. The population comprised 404,521 public senior secondary school students of 2023/2024 academic session and a sample of 1,532 SSII Economics students was drawn through multi-stage sampling procedure from the population. The instruments used for data collection were the adapted 2023 WAEC, NECO, and NABTEB SSCE multiple-choice Economics papers with reliability coefficient of 0.75, 0.89, and 0.88 respectively obtained by the researcher using split half method. The research questions were answered using descriptive statistics of mean and standard T-scores. Major findings revealed that (1) there is significant differences in difficulty between the pair of form A-C (t-4.473=.000, p < 0.05) and B-C (t-4.375=.000, p < 0.05), (2) there was no significant difference in the respondents performance on common items across the three examinations (ႿWA = 2.121; ႿNE = 2.114; ႿNA = 2.504), (3) while performance on unique items varied across the test forms (ႿWA = 7.30 < ႿNE = 7.40 < ႿNA = 8.34), with form C exhibiting the highest mean performance and form A the least performance (4) linear equating method revealed a positive linear relationship between raw scores and T-scores. The researchers concluded that form C (NABTEB) was distinctly easier, indicating significant differences from other forms (WAEC & NECO) that shown no statistical difference in students' ability or proficiency, that both test items are comparable. It was therefore recommended among others linear equating method for equating scores across these WAEC, NECO, and NABTEB Economics multiple-choice test should be considered.