FIMS matrix

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FIMS matrix

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What we could call a "carefully-developed" test is one designed from tables such as the ones seen below. These tables were actually used in the third international testing program (TIMSS 1995), but the FIMS study (1965) would have used something similar.

 

The first table lays out the essential content areas within which test items will be written, and sets out the number of items to be developed using three item types: multiple-choice, short-answer, and extended-response.

 

TIMMScontentMatrix

A companion table lays out four levels of student performance expectations, and specifies the number of test items to be created for each of the levels.

 

TIMMSperformanceMatrix

 

Here I might do well to pause for questions -- if you, like me, are a teacher, could you develop tables like these for your own subject area? There's a lot of work involved, and these tables indicate that only 102 test items were created for six content categories -- other subjects might require many more items, for example, think about "Earth Sciences", where there might be nine content categories: Astronomy / Earthquakes / Erosion / Maps / Plate Tectonics / Rocks & Minerals / Volcanoes / Water / Weather.

 

The maths teachers had just four performance expectations, but other subject areas, such as Earth Science, might make use of Bloom's taxonomy for the cognitive domain with six performance expectations: rememberingunderstandingapplyinganalyzingsynthesizingevaluation.  

 

Altogether, the FIMS maths test design had six content categories and four performance expectations, a total of 24 cells -- Earth Sciences, on the other hand, might have nine categories and six performance expectations for a total of 54 cells -- a big difference if we think of having to write test items for each cell; the Earth Science teachers would have more work to do, and work it is, too, as writing good quality test items is not easy.

 

Let's now we can look at some sample test items from the FIMS study (page ahead to the next topic).