Developed by Jane Jackson
| Purpose | To assess students’ understanding of the most basic concepts in Newtonian physics using everyday language and common-sense distractors, at a seventh grade reading level. |
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| Format | Pre/post, Multiple-choice |
| Duration | 30 min |
| Focus | Mechanics Content knowledge (kinematics, forces) |
| Level | High school, Middle school |
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Sample question from the SFCI:
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Bronze ValidationThis is the third highest level of research validation, corresponding to at least 3 of the validation categories below.
Research Validation Summary
Based on Research Into:
- Student thinking
Studied Using:
- Student interviews
- Expert review
- Appropriate statistical analysis
Research Conducted:
- At multiple institutions
- By multiple research groups
- Peer-reviewed publication
The SFCI was developed by modifying the original FCI to fit a seventh-grade reading level using some items from the G-FCI and feedback from several ninth grade physics educators and FCI co-author David Hestenes. See the pages for the FCI and G-FCI for details on the research validating these tests. To compare the SFCI to the FCI, Osborn Popp and Jackson 2009 gave both tests to 95 11th- and 12th-grade students, and found that both scores and item difficulty were very similar on the two tests. In a second study, they randomly gave either the FCI or the SFCI to 103 ninth-grade students, and found that the ninth graders performed significantly higher on the SFCI. These results suggests that the simplified language is helpful for ninth graders, but does not make any difference for older students.
References
- S. Osborn Popp and J. Jackson, Can Assessment of Student Conceptions of Force be Enhanced Through Linguistic Simplification?, presented at the American Educational Research Association 2009, San Diego, CA, 2009.
PhysPort provides translations of assessments as a service to our users, but does not endorse the accuracy or validity of translations. Assessments validated for one language and culture may not be valid for other languages and cultures.
| Language | Translator(s) | |
|---|---|---|
| Spanish | Sofía Veliz |  |
If you know of a translation that we don't have yet, or if you would like to translate this assessment, please contact us!
| Typical Results | |||||||||
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11th- and 12th-grade students typically score about the same on the SFCI and FCI. 9th-grade students typically score higher on the SFCI than on the FCI. Below are typical raw scores (out of 30) for both tests from Osborne Popp and Jackson 2009.
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The SFCI is on one of several variations of the original Force Concept Inventory, all of which have the same answer key:
- The Gender FCI (aka Everyday FCI) uses the same questions and answer choices as the original FCI, but changes the contexts to make them more "everyday" or "feminine" (McCullough & Meltzer, 2001; McCullough, 2011).
- The Animated FCI takes the original FCI questions and animates the diagrams, so it is given on a computer. (Dancy and Beichner, 2006)
- The Familiar Context FCI was adapted from the Gender FCI by Jane Jackson.
- The Simplified FCI was adapted from the original FCI by Jane Jackson for ninth grade physics. It was written at a 7th grade reading level and includes more illustrations, but assesses the same concepts. (Osborn Popp and Jackson 2009)
The latest version of the S-FCI, V2015, was released in March 2015. The latest change, in March 2015, was correcting the spelling of scuba in #29. In Oct. 2013 a picture was added in question #25; and in question #7 the word necklace was added for clarity. Other changes from the original Aug. 2007 version: Sept. 2013, in questions #25, 26, & 27, context was changed from sofa to large empty box. June 2013: in question #29, the word “net” was removed. August 2009: question #12 context was changed from cannon to baby in high chair. May 2009: question #29 context was changed from fish to scuba diver. Jan. 2009: Question #18 was changed to FCI gender version (same context, but fewer words in answer choices).
Variations
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Force Concept InventoryContent knowledge Mechanics (kinematics, forces)Intro college, High school Pre/post, Multiple-choice |
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Gender FCIContent knowledge Mechanics (kinematics, forces)Intro college, High school Pre/post, Multiple-choice |
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Familiar Context Force Concept InventoryContent knowledge Mechanics (kinematics, forces)Intro college, High school Pre/post, Multiple-choice |
