Development of the Proton NMR Concept Inventory (PNCI)

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2025

Publication Title

Journal of Chemical Education

Abstract

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is a widely utilized analytical technique in chemistry. This study focuses on developing a concept inventory to assess students’ understanding of fundamental proton NMR concepts, including signal counting, splitting, and chemical shift, as well as their ability to integrate these concepts to solve related problems. The manuscript details the creation of test items addressing these concepts and their psychometric evaluation using Classical Test Theory and Rasch Analysis. During the development phase, we conducted open-ended interviews with 24 students and consulted prominent organic chemistry textbooks and literature to identify the key concepts for the inventory. The PNCI 1, PNCI 2 and PNCI 3 administrations, consisting of 18, 20, and 18 items respectively, were utilized to identify the best items and distractors for the concept inventory. Response process validation interviews were conducted with the same group of undergraduate students to verify their thought processes. Additionally, we interviewed graduate students and faculty to gather insights on the inventory content. Following these iterations, the final version of the inventory, containing 15 items, was administered to 594 first-semester undergraduate organic chemistry students across four different institutions in the United States. Our results demonstrate that the inventory effectively evaluates students’ understanding of proton NMR spectroscopy concepts and the data meets acceptable standards for validity and reliability.

DOI

10.1021/acs.jchemed.5c00026

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