Chemical Concepts Inventory (CCI)
Purpose
The Chemical Concepts Inventory (CCI) is designed to assess students’ alternate conceptions of chemistry topics typically encountered in high school or first-semester college chemistry courses.
Population
The CCI is commonly administered in high school and introductory college chemistry courses.
Typical Performance
We haven’t performed an analysis of the LASSO data for typical performance, but the literature shows pretest scores around 47% and posttest scores around 51%. The raw gains are fairly small (4%).
Example question
Validity
The CCI was originally developed in 2002 and underwent significant additional validation in 2013 and 2014. The validation has focussed on college students but spans several institutions. While there are some items that were shown to be weaker than others, in general, the instrument was shown to be reasonably reliable and valid across introductory physics classes. Relevant articles are listed below:
Mulford, D. R., & Robinson, W. R. (2002). An inventory for alternate conceptions among first-semester general chemistry students. Journal of chemical education, 79(6), 739.
Barbera, J. (2013). A psychometric analysis of the chemical concepts inventory. Journal of Chemical Education, 90(5), 546-553.
Schwartz, P., & Barbera, J. (2014). Evaluating the content and response process validity of data from the chemical concepts inventory. Journal of Chemical Education, 91(5), 630-640.
Research
The research conducted with the CCI is extensive. We recommend reviewing the citations listed under validation to find articles of interest.
- Krause, S., Birk, J., Bauer, R., Jenkins, B., & Pavelich, M. J. (2004, October). Development, testing, and application of a chemistry concept inventory. In 34th Annual Frontiers in Education, 2004. FIE 2004. (pp. T1G-1). IEEE.
- Kruse, R. A., & Roehrig, G. H. (2005). A comparison study: Assessing teachers’ conceptions with the chemistry concepts inventory. Journal of chemical education, 82(8), 1246.
- Salame, I. I., & Casino, P. (2021). Using chemistry concepts inventory to identify alternative conceptions and their persistence in general chemistry courses. International Journal of Instruction, 14(3), 787-806.
Example LASSO Report
Please follow this link to our example report for concept inventories.