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Guide to Item Analysis Introduction Item Analysis (a.k.a. Test Question Analysis) is a useful means of discovering how well individual test items assess what students have learned. For instance, it helps us to answer the following questions. Is a particular question as difficult, complex, or rigorous as you intend it to be?
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Sep 10, 2019 · Item analysis is the act of analyzing student responses to individual exam questions with the intention of evaluating exam quality. It is an important tool to uphold test effectiveness and fairness. Item analysis is likely something educators do both consciously and unconsciously on a regular basis. In fact, grading literally involves studying ...
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- What Is Item Analysis?
- How to Do Item Analysis
- Item Analysis with Classical Test Theory
- Item Analysis with Item Response Theory
- Summary
Item analysis refers to the process of statistically analyzing assessment data to evaluate the quality and performance of your test items. This is an important step in the test development cycle, not only because it helps improve the quality of your test, but because it provides documentation for validity: evidence that your test performs well and ...
1. Prepare your data
Most psychometric software utilizes a person x item matrix. That is, a data file where examinees are rows and items are columns. Sometimes, it is a sparse matrix where is a lot of missing data, like linear on the fly testing. You will also need to provide metadata to the software, such as your Item IDs, correct answers, item types, etc. The format for this will differ by software.
2. Run data through item analysis software
To implement item analysis, you should utilize dedicated software designed for this purpose. If you utilize an online assessment platform, it will provide you output for item analysis, such as distractor P values and point-biserials (if not, it isn’t a real assessment platform). In some cases, you might utilize standalone software. CITAS provides a simple spreadsheet-based approach to help you learn the basics, completely for free. A screenshot of the CITAS output is here. However, profession...
3. Interpret results of item analysis
Item analysis software will produce tables of numbers. Sometimes, these will be ugly ASCII-style tables from the 1980s. Sometimes, they will be beautiful Word docs with graphs and explanations. Either way, you need to interpret the statistics to determine which items have problems and how to fix them. The rest of this article will delve into that.
Classical Test Theory provides a simple and intuitive approach to item analysis. It utilizes nothing more complicated than proportions, averages, counts, and correlations. For this reason, it is useful for small-scale exams or use with groups that do not have psychometricexpertise.
Item Response Theory (IRT) is a very sophisticated paradigm of item analysis and tackles numerous psychometric tasks, from item analysis to equating to adaptive testing. It requires much larger sample sizes than CTT (100-1000 responses per item) and extensive expertise (typically a PhD psychometrician). It isn’t suitable for small-scale exams like ...
This article is a very broad overview and does not do justice to the complexity of psychometrics and the art of diagnosing/revising items! I recommend that you download some of the item analysis software and start exploring your own data. For additional reading, I recommend some of the common textbooks. For more on how to write/revise items, check ...
Understanding Item Analyses. Item analysis is a process which examines student responses to individual test items (questions) in order to assess the quality of those items and of the test as a whole. Item analysis is especially valuable in improving items which will be used again in later tests, but it can also be used to eliminate ambiguous or ...
Item analysis. Within psychometrics, Item analysis refers to statistical methods used for selecting test items for inclusion in a psychological test. The concept goes back at least to Guildford (1936). The process of item analysis varies depending on the psychometric model. For example, classical test theory or the Rasch model call for ...
Item analysis uses statistics and expert judgment to evaluate tests based on the quality of individual items, item sets, and entire sets of items, as well as the relationship of each item to other items. It “investigates the performance of items considered individually either in relation to some external criterion or in relation to the
Dec 10, 2023 · Item analysis is a statistical method used to determine the quality of test items. It involves analyzing the responses of individuals to each item in a test or assessment, with the aim of identifying the items that are most effective in measuring the intended learning outcomes. The process typically involves calculating item difficulty and item ...
