Construction and Validation of Biology Assessment Test (BAT) for Junior High School Students

: This test development study aims to develop and validate an achievement test in Biology designed for junior high school completers. Test items were pooled from selected lessons in Biology. The researchers prepared a table of specification (TOS) and subjected the102-item multiple choice type of examination to validation by experts. After the initial validation, the test had 88 items that were pilot tested among 172 grade 11 students at a private university. The researcher did item analysis which classified 67 items as "average," 21 as "hard," none as" easy," 10 as "very good", 12 as "good," 19 as “fair” and 47 as "poor." Consistency and reliability were obtained using Kuder-Richardson (KR) 20. A total of 22 items were retained of the 88 based on validation and item analysis. Three items that were initially classified as "fair" and with "marginal" difficulty index were revised to produce a 25-item final version of the Biology Achievement Test.


Introduction
Biology is a broad field of knowledge that requires the acquisition of knowledge within and outside of classroom environments. On the other hand, it is a subject that is least preferred by high school students (Kubiatko et al., 2017). Furthermore, some topics in biology were found to be boring for students, such as systems, tissues, and power transformation (Derman, 2017). However, biology has been providing essential innovations in human lives through studies of its branches of microbiology; biotechnology; molecular biology; genetics, and many more (Köksal & Yaman, 2013). Hence, biology is undeniably part of progress of the quality of life, making it one of the essential subjects in basic education.
In the Philippines, the curriculum shift to K to 12 is one of the most significant challenges in education (Casina, 2018;Hernando-Malipot, 2018a;Luci-Atienza, 2019). The curriculum shows excellent potential for graduates (Hernando-Malipot, 2018b;Hernando-Malipot, 2018c). The K to 12 Science curriculum is anchored on learner-centered and inquiry-based approaches. It aims to equip students with competencies necessary for employment and future higher education. Furthermore, this provides learners with a full range of understanding of society. It also follows a spiral approach from grades 3 to 10. Each grade level is divided into four main domains: Matter; Living things and their environment; Force, motion and Energy; and Earth and space (DepEd, 2016). Living things and their environment are where the life sciences and biology are integrated.
Additionally, the K-12 Science curriculum is viewed as a setting that prepares students' aptitudes (Cabansag, 2014). The shift from the common traditional science education to the spiral approach is one of the key features of the K to 12 science curriculum. Learners recognize this shift in science education, as it positively influences their acquisition of science concepts, skills, and attitudes (Montebon, 2015). Moreover, learning science, specifically Biology, requires more than a shift in pedagogical models. However, classroom conditions, the role of the teacher, and the learners themselves are parts of the learning process. Therefore, in addition to improving the teaching and learning process, learning assessment should also be considered (Utari & Djukri, 2017).
One of the fundamental measures of student learning is through assessment. A functional assessment is part of teaching practice and evidence that allows educators to assess students' learning progress (Edwards, 2013). One assessment that teachers can use to assess students' learning progress is the use of an achievement test. An achievement test is related to academic growth and advancement (Singh & Yadav, 2018). Therefore, constructing and validating an achievement test gives a clear picture of students' performance, specifically in Biology subject in K-12 curriculum. With this goal in mind, the researchers aim to develop an achievement test on topics in grades 7-10 or junior high school. This test development focuses on measuring junior high school achievement levels about concepts as indicated in the competencies in living things and their environment. The development of the achievement test is an attempt to provide a clear picture of students' accomplishments, especially in biology.

Materials and Methods
The entire process of constructing the Biology Achievement Test (BAT) includes (a) preparation, (b) development of the BAT, and (c) validation.

Preparation
The K-12 Basic Education Curriculum Guide in Science (DepEd, 2016) was used as the main guide when considering the scope of the achievement test. Two reference materials from grades 7 to 10 were also used as a source of questions. These books were developed and are being used in private schools. In the study, no reference materials published before 2017 were used.

Development of BAT
Based on the curriculum guide set by the Department of Education, the biology part of spiral Science includes the following components: animal parts and function, inheritance and variation, biodiversity and evolution, and ecosystems. Given the broad scope of the curriculum guide, the researchers developed a table of specifications or TOS (Appendix 3) for ten questions on each component of each level of the year.

Validation
The validation of the test material was done by four seasoned junior high school science teachers. The validators evaluated the content and construction of each question. The researchers requested the validators to mark the items as acceptable or not. Items that were marked as "acceptable" by at least two validators were retained. Suggestions like changing the options, the format of the stem, and the arrangement of options were also considered. After revision, the researchers administered the test to grade 11 students from a private school. These grade 11 students were enrolled in Technology, Vocational, and Livelihood Track, Science and Technology Engineering and Mathematics Strand, Accountancy and Business Management Track and General Academic Strand during the school year 2018 to 2019.
Item analysis, particularly the difficulty index (DI), and Index of discrimination (ID), was done using the method developed by Arevalo and Ignacio (2018). Internal reliability was achieved using the Kuder-Richardson formula 20 (KR20) in Microsoft Excel. Items that had 0.30 or better ID were retained, while those with 0.29 or lower ID were either revised or rejected.

Experts' Evaluation
Four evaluators were tasked with evaluating the 102-item multiple choice test (Appendix 1). Three of the four evaluators are master's degree holders and teaching science subjects in senior high school during the study, while the other one was in the thesis proposal phase. Face validation was done by checking the construction of the test, grammar, options given, and even the length of the questions.
Of the 102 items, 88 were retained after a round of validation from the evaluators. Some items were deleted due to broad scope, ambiguous stems, repeated concepts, and items deemed very easy. After revision, the researchers administered the 88-item exam (Appendix 1) to 172 grade 11 students in a private school in Pampanga.

Test Administration and Checking
The exam was administered per class. The proctor explained the general instructions through a pre-examination orientation which included directors on how to answer, the time required to finish the examination and, most importantly, the nature of the examination (Figure 1). The examination was answered by shading the letter that corresponds to the right answer. Changing the answer was discouraged because the answer sheet was machine-checked, specifically by an optical media reader (OMR).

Item Analysis
The researchers analyzed the elements using a spreadsheet developed by Arevalo and Ignacio (2018). The item analysis for the 88 biology achievement test (BAT) included the index of difficulty (ID) and the discrimination index (DI). Both indices served as the basis for rejecting, revising, or accepting the item for the BAT (Appendix Table 2).

Reliability
Internal consistency and reliability were measured using Kuder-Richardson (KR) 20. This reliability test measures the inter-item consistency (Patock, 2004). It is based on assumed test items that are equal or closely related (Sarmah & Hazarika, 2012). The KR 20 was calculated using the proportion of correct and wrong answers and the variance of the wrong scores.
The mean score of 172 students was 32.06, with a standard deviation of 7.26 (Appendix Table 3).
Calculating the KR20 reliability of the 88-item BAT, the researcher was able to deduce the KR20 to 0.65. The ideal value for KR20 is 1.00, while the acceptable range is 0.60 or higher (Zimmaro, 2016). Thus, the BAT shows acceptable reliability in terms of KR20.

Final Version of BAT
The final version of the BAT is made up of 22 items that were deemed acceptable based on item analysis (Table 3). Three more items were reconsidered to complete a total of 25-item Biology achievement test for junior high school.

Conclusion
This test development project aimed to develop and validate an achievement test in Biology (BAT). The test was designed to assess the achievement of junior high school completers, the Grade 11 senior high school, in biology concepts. The BAT possesses a reliability of 0.65 based on KR20. In the Philippine setting, implementing a new curriculum is a challenge for teachers. The effectiveness of the new curriculum is dependent on exploration through experiments. Thus, developing a valid and reliable examination is one of the main goals in describing the effects of the curriculum on the students.

Recommendations
The results suggest that there is a need for the BAT to be validated by more experts who have higher educational attainment and richer experience in teaching biology and to revalidate the BAT with more respondents from both public and private schools and more locales. Another round of validation will improve the content of BAT, specifically on concepts and the alignment of the items with the required competencies by the Department of Biology for senior high schools.