https://ijojournals.com/index.php/er <p><span id="cell-9-name" class="gridCellContainer"><span class="label"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Cambria;"><strong>IJO - International Journal of Educational Research&nbsp;(E.ISSN: 2805-413X) (P.ISSN:&nbsp;2536-6696)</strong>&nbsp;is an International High Ranking, open-access journal that publishes high-quality articles in English, in all areas of Educational researc</span></span></span><span id="cell-9-name" class="gridCellContainer"><span class="label">h</span></span> (but not limited to) given below: Academic Advising and Counselling, Adult Education, Art Education, Business Education, Counsellor Education, Cross-disciplinary Areas of Education, Curriculum, Research and Development, Distance Education, Early Childhood Education, etc.&nbsp; &nbsp;</p> <p><span style="font-size: 1.5em;"><span style="text-shadow: #FF0000 0px 0px 2px;">Impact Factor: <strong>4.53</strong></span></span></p> IJO JOURNAL en-US IJO - International Journal of Educational Research (E.ISSN: 2805-413X) (P.ISSN: 2536-6696) 2805-413X <p>Author(s) and co-author(s)&nbsp;jointly&nbsp;and severally represent and warrant that the Article is original with the author(s) and does not infringe any&nbsp;copyright or violate any other right of any third parties and that the Article has not been published&nbsp;elsewhere.&nbsp;Author(s) agree to the terms that the <strong>IJO Journal</strong> will have the full right to remove the published article on any misconduct found in the published article.</p> https://ijojournals.com/index.php/er/article/view/1271 <p><em>The research investigated the impact of the sequence of test items on the performance of Junior Secondary School Students. A quasi-experimental research design was utilized for this study. The target population consisted of all Junior Secondary School Students across the three senatorial districts in Ekiti State, Nigeria. A sample of two hundred (200) students was selected from this population through a proportional sampling technique. The participants were categorized into an experimental group designated as A and a control group identified as B. A testing instrument referred to as the “Mathematics Multiple-Choice Test (MMCT) comprising three variants, A-C, was employed. Variant A was organized in ascending order of difficulty, whereas variant B was structured in descending order of difficulty, and variant C was arranged randomly without any specific order. The validity of the instruments was established using a table of specification (TOS), and a general reliability coefficient of 0.96 was calculated through the Kuder Richardson formula 20 (KR20). Mean, standard deviation, and t-test analyses were conducted to compare the means of each group against the control group and the test. The results indicated that arranging items in ascending order of difficulty exerted a positive and significant effect on students' performance in mathematics at a 0.05 alpha level, while the descending order arrangement demonstrated a positive yet insignificant effect on students' performance in mathematics. It was suggested that educators, test developers, and professional examination organizations should prioritize the arrangement of items from simpler to more complex to enhance students' confidence..</em></p> Olawale OMOYA (Ph.D.) Rhoda Oluwaseun KOLAWOLE Gbemisola Mary OYEWALE (Ph.D.) ##submission.copyrightStatement## https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 2026-04-08 2026-04-08 9 04 01 09