Abstract:
The objections of this study were 1) to observe the misconceptions about Chemical Equilibrium of the eleventh-grade students 2) to develop and verify the validity and reliability of a three-tier diagnostic test of the misconceptions on Chemistry using various levels of confidence 3) to compare the validity and reliability of the three-tier diagnostic test on Chemistry using various levels of confidence, and 4) to compare the consistency of the diagnosis of the three-tier diagnostic test of misconceptions on Chemistry using test-retest method. The participants were 180 eleventh-grade students. The tools used in this study were 3 three-tier diagnostic tests including 1) first diagnostic test using 2 levels of confidence 2) second diagnostic test using 4 levels of confidence, and 3) third diagnostic test using 6 levels of confidence; and a think-aloud method for misconceptions. The data analysis was divided into 2 parts: 1) the psychometric properties of the validity and reliability, and 2) the diagnostic quality by considering the consistency of the diagnosis using a test-retest method, and the covariant analysis of the scores from the first and second diagnosis occasions. The research results found that: 1) The diagnosis of misconceptions on Chemistry about Chemical Equilibrium indicated that the most misconception was Equilibrium States, followed by Equilibrium Constants and Factors that affect the Equilibrium. 2) The results of the development and the verification of the validity and reliability of the three-tier diagnostic test of the misconceptions on Chemistry using different levels of confidence could be summarized as follows: 2.1) The validity of the criterion-related validity from the three-tier diagnostic tests and the think-aloud method of the first, second, and third diagnostic tests were .519, .842, and .753, respectively. The criterion-related validity of the correlation between students content-and-reason answers and confidence answers of the first, second, and third diagnostic tests were, respectively, .676, .208, and .352. And the respective percentages of the diagnosis of the overall misconceptions using the three-tier diagnostic tests and the think-aloud method from the first, second, and third diagnostic tests were 46.67, 80.00, and 73.33. And 2.2) The internal reliability using Cronbachs alpha coefficient indicated that the first test had the value of .698. The second test had .571, and the third test had .110. The results in terms of statistical significance were at a level of .05. 3) The comparisons of the quality of the validity and reliability of the three-tier diagnostic test of the misconceptions on Chemistry with various levels of confidence using multiple comparisons resulted as follows: 3.1) The quality of the validity revealed that the second diagnostic test had the highest validity quality with statistical significance at level .05. And 3.2) The quality of the reliability revealed that the second diagnostic test had the highest internal reliability using Cronbachs alpha coefficient (a = .571) with statistical significance at level .05. 4) The comparisons of the consistency of the three-tier diagnostic test of the misconceptions on Chemistry using the test-retest method indicated as follows: The second diagnostic test had the highest diagnostic quality (overall) whereas the first and third diagnosis tests had no differences in the diagnostic quality (overall) with statistical significance at level .05. The overall conclusion of the quality considering the quality of validity and reliability and the diagnostic quality of the diagnostic test indicated that the second diagnostic test using 4 levels of confidence had the best diagnostic quality. And the first diagnostic test using 2 levels of confidence and the third diagnostic test using 6 levels of confidence had a similar diagnostic quality.