Development And Validation Of Giftedness Assessment Instrument For Primary Six Pupils In Lagos State, Nigeria

ABSTRACT

The need to identify the ‗real‘ gifted children in Nigeria for proper placement into gifted schools and the operationalization of giftedness concept prompted the development and validation of the Giftedness Assessment Instrument (GAI). Following the process of item construction, GAI comprises three components derived from several sources in a manner that retains the merits and eliminates the demerits of the sources, hence it is said to be integrated. The three components are: Above average ability test (GAI-1), Creative ability test (GAI-2) and Task commitment/motivation scale (GAI -3) with their independent attributes obtained through factor analysis using principal components with varimax rotations. The test was administered to 600 primary six pupils from public and private schools randomly selected from the six educational zones of Lagos State. The results obtained include: norms - for males and females and for public and private schools, high reliability and validity coefficients and discriminant validity with other standardized convergent and divergent measures of giftedness. To enhance the interpretation of the results, the scores were transformed into standard scores. The instrument was recommended for use in the identification and selection of primary six pupils into the gifted schools.