Abstract:

The article shows the importance of mathematical competence for the future professional activity of students specializing in economics. Mathematical competence of Bachelors of economics is considered as an integral quality of personality that characterizes the desire and ability to realize their knowledge, skills and personal qualities for successful activity in the field of mathematics application.

The structure of mathematical competence includes three parts: possession of mathematical facts (definitions and theorems) and methods for solving typical problems; knowledge of methods of mathematical modeling (formalization and interpretation), application of mathematics in other areas; possession of heuristic techniques for finding solution to problems and proving theorems.

To create a test specification, each part of the mathematical competence is concretized with a list of requirements that can be tested using specially created tasks. The purpose of this article is to identify the possibilities of a test assessment of the mathematical competence of future bachelors of economics and to prove the content validity of the test.

The article presents examples of test tasks on integral calculus to assess each item of the specification. It is revealed that the test tasks effectively test all the components of mathematical competence, except for the possession of modeling methods for solving practice-oriented economic problems. Other control methods, such as case, are needed to evaluate these skills.

To assess the applicability of the test for a wide range of students, it is necessary to identify the content validity of the test. The content validity of the test was evaluated using expert assessments and calculating the coefficient of discriminating ability of the test. Both methods gave similar results. Thus, the possibility of using the test to assess the level of mathematical competence of students was confirmed.

Keywords:

Test, validity, mathematical competence, test development, validation.