The Relativity Concept Inventory: development, analysis and results

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.