ABSTRACT

 This research work was designed to develop, validate and use of a criterion referenced achievement test for senior secondary two students in Biology. Related literature to this study showed that Biology in the senior secondary schools is aimed at bringing about desirable behavioural changes which are the products of the objectives of the teaching/learning situations needed to be quantified and qualified. This cannot be attained without proper evaluation. This study was guided by seven research questions and three hypotheses using instrumentation design. The population of the study was made up of 12000 Biology students in senior secondary school class two (2014/2015) in Abia State. The sample comprised 291 males and 309 females given a total of 600 students. This sample was drawn from 6 out of 17 Local Government Areas of Abia State selected using proportionate stratified simple random sampling technique. The instrument used for data collection was CRATB based on the objectives of three content areas and was made up of 50 content items. The validity and reliability of the instrument were established. The internal consistency measure of the instrument was found to be 0.82 using Kudder Richardson formula 20 (KR-20). The instrument was administered in two stages, pretest and post test. Mean, Standard deviation and formula developed by Kryspin Feildhusen (1974) were used to answer the research questions, while t-test was employed in testing the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. From the results of the analysis, it was found that: the developed and validated criterion referenced achievement test in Biology for senior secondary schools has average psychometric properties in terms of difficulty and discrimination index; the instrument has high reliability index; the instrument adequately measure the effects of the instruction; there was significant difference between the achievement of male and that of female students in Biology at the senior secondary school level in favour of the male students; there was a significant difference in mean achievement between students in schools located in urban areas and those in rural areas in favour of urban students. Based on the findings, recommendations were made. The recommendations include the following: the developed criterion referenced achievement test in Biology instrument should be used by Biology teachers; the items of the CRATB developed should serve as template to develop other achievement instrument in Biology; while using the developed CRATB, the influence of gender has to be noted; the influence of school location has to be given adequate considerations when using the CRATB.