Piloting of a Computer Science Content Knowledge Test for 10th Grade Students

New (interdisciplinary) Computer Science (CS) subjects in K-12 education have been introduced in recent years. Most of them have educational plans derived from CS Frameworks such as the K-12 CS Framework. To some extent the educational plans have the same core topic areas: data and coding (including data compression and data structures), algorithms (involving variables and software projects), computers and networks (covering topics like logic tables and data transmission) and information society and data security (consisting of collection and processing of personal data and asymmetric encryption). Various Computer Science assessment tests such as the SCS1, MG-CSCI, PSIv1 and the Fairy Assessment have been developed for different age groups. These tests mostly include computational thinking, programming or topics that could be categorized in the first two core topic areas data and coding and algorithms. Hence, the research desideratum was to develop a test specifically for measuring the four core topic areas. These core topic areas are part of the educational plan of the new interdisciplinary subject IMP (Informatics, Mathematics, Physics) for secondary schools in Germany. The test was piloted with 156 (m = 117, f = 37, o = 2) 10th grade students, approximately aged 16 at the end of the lower secondary level. We used the Item-Response-Theory (IRT) to validate the test. This work in progress paper presents translated items and the psychometric evaluation of the piloted test. The contribution for both researchers and educators in the CS education research field is the set of items of the research-based CS test in the four core topic areas for 10th grade students that includes item sets for the areas computers and networks and information society and data security.