The Influence Factors On Item Difficulty Of Chinese Physics Olympiad

Chinese Physics Olympiad (physics contest in the paper) is an important subject knowledge contest for high school students. It is not only a meaningful activity after physics class, but also a way to discovering and training the excellent students in their early stages. As a main learning evaluation item, it is known that difficulty is one of important characteristics of physics contest. What on earth are there affecting the difficulty of the examination questions? How about the characteristics? Can it be in accordance with the purposes or meanings of the physics contest itself? All these questions involve the evaluation criterion of the competition.The Influential Factors on Item Difficulty of physics contest are selected for my research object in the paper. The main investigation consists of two parts. To begin with, practical and theoretical basis of the research hypothesis are obtained by interviewing teachers and analyzing literature content. Combined characteristics of physics contest, the hypothesis of 10 factors and corresponding value assignment criterion are put forward. Then, assigning value to examination questions in ChongQing 2003, 2005 and 2008, and according to the difficulty in the 3 years, I take statistical test on the hypothesis of 10 factors. On one hand, the influential factors in statistically, which can be used as the basis for evaluation and analysis of Item Difficulty of physics contest objectively, have been obtained. On the other hand, I could find the characteristics of the difficulty of physics contest by analyzing and discussing hypothesis of the 10 factors. In addition, the researches in the paper can give guidance and referrals for tutors and examinees from three angles, proposition and solving of the contest questions, professional development of teachers, and guidance of contest education, respectively.After synthesizing the two investigations, the main conclusions can be obtained as follows:Statistically, there are four factors that significantly affect the difficulty of physics contest, i.e. the novelty of problem; the level of knowledge points; the requirement for ability of thinking and the complexity of mathematical processing. Several of their trends could be obtained as follows respectively. First, the more novel the contest is, and the more difficult the contest is. Second, questions involved in knowledge points' in contest level are more difficult than those not involved in. Third, the higher the ability of thinking requires, the more difficult the contest is. Last but not least, if questions need more complicated mathematical treatments, they are solved more difficultly. The factors mentioned above reflected the tendency of examination and the main characteristics of the physics contest questions' difficulty from four different respects which are contest background, features of knowledge points, demands for examinee's ability and mathematical level, respectively.In the paper, there not exist notable correlation between the rest assumptive influential factors and contest question difficulty. The rest factors include the reading load of problems, step-by-step question, and the number of knowledge points, the comprehensive degree of knowledge, the number of logic turning, and the skills to solve problems. However, several demands for examinees and the traits of contest question could still be found from the six factors by analyzing the characteristics of contest questions related to the factors.