item analysis

Item Analysis

Item Analysis is a process of examining

the student’s response to individual item in the test. It consists of different procedures for assessing the quality of the test items of the students

There are two types of item analysis:

- Quantitative Item Analysis

- Qualitative Item Analysis

Difficulty Index

refers to the proportion of the number of students in the upper and lower groups who answered an item correctly.

Difficulty Index Formula

DF = n/N, where

DF= difficulty index

n= number of the students selecting item

correctly in the upper group and lower group

N= total number of students of students who

answered the test

Level of DifficultyIndex Range Difficulty Level

0.00-0.20 Very Difficult

0.21-0.40 Difficult

0.41-0.60 Average/Moderately Difficult

0.61-0.80 Easy

0.81-1.00 Very Easy

Discrimination Index

The power of the item to discriminate the students between those who scored high and those who scored low in the overall test.

Types of Discrimination Index

1. Positive Discrimination

2. Negative Discrimination

3. Zero Discrimination

Positive Discrimination

happens when more students in the upper group got the item correctly than those students in the lower group.

Negative Discrimination

occurs when more students in the lower group got the item correctly than the students in the upper group

Zero Discrimination

happens when a number of students in the upper group and lower group who answer the test correctly are equal

Levels of Discrimination

Ebel (1986) and Hetzel (1997)Index Range Discrimination Level

0.19 and below Poor item, should be eliminated or needed to be revised

0.20- 0.29 Marginal item, needs some revision

0.30-0.39 Reasonably good item but possibly for improvement

0.40 and above Very good item

Discrimination Index Formula

DI = CUG - CLG /D , where

DI = discrimination index value

CUG = number of students selecting

the correct answer in the upper group

CLG = number of students selecting the

correct answer in the lower group

Analysis of Response Options

Another way to evaluate the performance of the entire test item is through the analysis of the response options. It is very important to examine the performance of each option in a multiple-choice item.

Distracter Analysis

Distracter- term used for the incorrect options in the multiple-choice type of test while the correct answer represents the key

Factors why students failed to get the correct answer in the given

question:

• It is not taught in the class properly.

• It is ambiguous.• The correct answer is not in

the given in the options.• It has more than one correct

answer.

Factors why students failed to get the correct answer in the given

question:

• It contains grammatical clues to mislead the students.

• The student is not aware of the content.• The students were confused by the logic

of the question because it has double negatives.

• The student failed to study the lesson.

Miskeyed Item

The test item is a potential miskey if there are more students from the upper group who choose the incorrect options than the key.

Guessing itemStudents from the upper group have equal

spread of choices among the given alternatives. The students from the upper group guess their answers because of the following reasons:

• the content of the test is not discussed in the class or in the test.

• The item is very difficult.• The question is trivial.• Ambiguous item

Ambiguous item

This happens when more students from the upper group choose equally an incorrect option and the keyed answer.

Qualitative Item Analysis

is a process in which the teacher or expert carefully proofreads the test before it is administered. (Zurawski R.M.)

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