Interpreting the force concept inventory: A reply to Hestenes and Halloun

Heller, Patrícia; Huffman, Douglas

doi:10.1119/1.2344279

Cited by 61 publications

(44 citation statements)

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“…Hence, the low reliabilities might be the consequence of the difficulty of the test. Heller and Huffman (1995) proposed two possible alternative reasons for the low correlation between the FCI items they found as a result of the factor analysis:…”

Section: Discussion Of the Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Afterwards Heller and Huffman (1995) published a new article discussing the details of factor analysis and in this respect the validity of the FCI. They stated that their results indicated that the FCI items were only weakly correlated, such that for the university sample only 17 % of the correlations were above 0.19.…”

Section: Poe Technique Developed At the University Of Pittsburgh And mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Development and application of a four-tier test to assess pre-service physics teachers’ misconceptions about geometrical optics

Gürel

Eryılmaz

McDermott

2017

Research in Science & Technological Education

140

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iii I hereby declare that all information in this document has been obtained and presented in accordance with academic rules and ethical conduct. I also declare that, as required by these rules and conduct, I have fully cited and referenced all material and results that are not original to this work. held by more than 10 % of the pre-service teachers, were identified and considered to be significant.

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Section: Discussion Of the Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Poe Technique Developed At the University Of Pittsburgh And mentioning

confidence: 99%

Development and application of a four-tier test to assess pre-service physics teachers’ misconceptions about geometrical optics

Gürel

Eryılmaz

McDermott

2017

Research in Science & Technological Education

140

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The grouping took into account a wide range of factors concerning the design of the FCI [1,[3][4][5]12,13], the involved concepts and contexts of the questions [13][14][15], as well as the construction features of the test such as individual and sequenced question structures.…”

Section: Methods and Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dividing the Force Concept Inventory into two equivalent half-length tests

Han¹,

Bao²,

Chen³

et al. 2015

Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res.

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The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) is a 30-question multiple-choice assessment that has been a building block for much of the physics education research done today. In practice, there are often concerns regarding the length of the test and possible test-retest effects. Since many studies in the literature use the mean score of the FCI as the primary variable, it would be useful then to have different shorter tests that can produce FCI-equivalent scores while providing the benefits of being quicker to administer and overcoming the testretest effects. In this study, we divide the 1995 version of the FCI into two half-length tests; each contains a different subset of the original FCI questions. The two new tests are shorter, still cover the same set of concepts, and produce mean scores equivalent to those of the FCI. Using a large quantitative data set collected at a large midwestern university, we statistically compare the assessment features of the two halflength tests and the full-length FCI. The results show that the mean error of equivalent scores between any two of the three tests is within 3%. Scores from all tests are well correlated. Based on the analysis, it appears that the two half-length tests can be a viable option for score based assessment that need to administer tests quickly or need to measure short-term gains where using identical pre-and post-test questions is a concern.

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“…Factor analysis is often employed to identify these subgroups. The FCI authors proposed a division of the instrument into subcategories [1], but exploratory factor analysis failed to reproduce this division [2,52,53]. More recent analyses have resolved an alternate factor structure [3,48]; however, replication studies are needed to determine if these structures are robust.…”

Section: Reliabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender fairness within the Force Concept Inventory

Traxler

Henderson

Stewart

et al. 2018

Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res.

134

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Research on the test structure of the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) has largely ignored gender, and research on FCI gender effects (often reported as "gender gaps") has seldom interrogated the structure of the test. These rarely crossed streams of research leave open the possibility that the FCI may not be structurally valid across genders, particularly since many reported results come from calculus-based courses where 75% or more of the students are men. We examine the FCI considering both psychometrics and gender disaggregation (while acknowledging this as a binary simplification), and find several problematic questions whose removal decreases the apparent gender gap. We analyze three samples (total N pre ¼ 5391, N post ¼ 5769) looking for gender asymmetries using classical test theory, item response theory, and differential item functioning. The combination of these methods highlights six items that appear substantially unfair to women and two items biased in favor of women. No single physical concept or prior experience unifies these questions, but they are broadly consistent with problematic items identified in previous research. Removing all significantly gender-unfair items halves the gender gap in the main sample in this study. We recommend that instructors using the FCI report the reduced-instrument score as well as the 30-item score, and that credit or other benefits to students not be assigned using the biased items.

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Interpreting the force concept inventory: A reply to Hestenes and Halloun

Cited by 61 publications

References 0 publications

Development and application of a four-tier test to assess pre-service physics teachers’ misconceptions about geometrical optics

Development and application of a four-tier test to assess pre-service physics teachers’ misconceptions about geometrical optics

Dividing the Force Concept Inventory into two equivalent half-length tests

Gender fairness within the Force Concept Inventory

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