2
Abstract
This study developed the instruments to measure basic science competency for students of secondary
grade 1 on the basis of the basic education curriculum of Buddhist Era 2544 (2001 A.D.). The quality of the
instruments was determined and their norms and manuals constructed. The instruments consisted of a 30-item test
to measure environmental understanding,
a 30-item test to measure the process of reasoning in search of
knowledge, and a 60-item test to measure scientific attitude. The research sample, by means of stratified random
sampling, consisted of 650 students of secondary grade 1 under the Office of Satun Educational Zone. The research
findings were as follows.
The three instruments to measure basic science competency for students of secondary grade 1 showed
content validity by correspondence-index values from 0.70 to 1.00 and construct validity by correlation-coefficient
values between item scores and total-test scores at the 0.01 and 0.05 levels of statistical significance.
The test to measure environmental understanding showed difficulty values from 0.39 to 0.74,
discriminative-power values from 0.33 to 0.56, a reliability value of 0.82, a standard deviation of measurement of
2.45, and norm values from T
33
to T
67
.
The test to measure the process of reasoning in search of knowledge showed difficulty values from 0.52
to 0.77, discriminative-power values from 0.33 to 0.83, a reliability value of 0.85, a standard deviation of
measurement of 2.46, and norm values from T
33
to T
66
.
The test to measure scientific attitude showed t-values of discriminative power at the 0.01 and 0.001
levels of statistical significance, a reliability value of 0.83, a standard deviation of measurement of 7.50, and norm
values from T
30
to T
76
.
Keywords
: Basic science competency, Scientific attitude, The instruments to measure basic science competency
