Developing a Higher-Order Thinking Skills Test Instrument for Ecosystem Material in Fifth-Grade Elementary School

Abstract

Higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) are a central objective of Indonesia's Merdeka Curriculum, yet classroom assessment instruments for elementary science frequently underrepresent items that require analyzing, evaluating, and creating. This study aimed to develop and evaluate the content validity, construct validity, and reliability of a HOTS test instrument for the ecosystem unit within the fifth-grade Ilmu Pengetahuan Alam dan Sosial (IPAS, Natural and Social Sciences) curriculum. A quantitative Research and Development (R&D) design was employed, following the Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate (ADDIE) model. The instrument, comprising ten essay items targeting the analyzing, evaluating, and creating cognitive levels, was reviewed by two expert validators and subsequently field-tested on 25 fifth-grade students at an Indonesian elementary school. Content validity was analyzed through expert-judgment percentage scoring, construct validity through Pearson's product-moment item-total correlation, and reliability through Cronbach's alpha. The instrument achieved a highly valid content-validity classification (83.75%); all ten items produced item-total correlations exceeding the critical r-table value, confirming construct validity; and the reliability analysis yielded a high internal-consistency coefficient (alpha = 0.717). These findings indicate that the developed instrument is both valid and reliable for measuring elementary students' higher-order thinking about ecosystems. The study offers teachers a ready-to-use, empirically validated assessment tool aligned with the Merdeka Curriculum and provides a replicable procedural model for developing topic-specific HOTS instruments in other elementary science domains.