Rebecca Lindell
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

Title: A Methodology for Developing Concept Inventories

Since the development of the Force Concept Inventory, there as been a 
heightened interest in developing other concept inventories that not only 
assess if students understand a phenomena, but also diagnose specific 
alternative understandings.  Unfortunately, there is no clear-cut 
methodology on how to construct such inventories.  One of the difficulties 
is that only some parts of test development theory are appropriate for 
such concept inventories.  This is due to the concept inventories being 
distracter driven, where test-takers do not randomly choose an incorrect 
answer.  In this talk, I will present a methodology for developing concept 
inventories, which combines traditional psychometric theory with modern 
theories of concentration and model analysis.  An example of how this 
methodology was utilized to develop the successful Lunar Phases Concept 
Inventory (LPCI) will also be given.