The Relativity Concept Inventory: development, analysis and results
J. S. Aslanides, C. M. Savage

TL;DR
This paper presents the development and analysis of a concept inventory for special relativity, incorporating confidence testing and Monte Carlo methods, revealing insights into student misconceptions and gender bias.
Contribution
It introduces a novel relativity concept inventory with confidence measures and Monte Carlo analysis, addressing small sample challenges and uncovering gender bias.
Findings
High confidence correlates with misconceptions
Gender bias observed in the inventory
Monte Carlo methods validated significance of correlations
Abstract
We report on a concept inventory for special relativity: the development process, data analysis methods, and results from an introductory relativity class. The Relativity Concept Inventory tests understanding of kinematic relativistic concepts. An unusual feature is confidence testing for each question. This can provide additional information; for example high confidence correlated with incorrect answers suggests a misconception. A novel aspect of our data analysis is the use of Monte Carlo simulations to determine the significance of correlations. This approach is particularly useful for small sample sizes, such as ours. Our results include a gender bias that was not present in other assessment, similar to that reported for the Force Concept Inventory.
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