ITEM ANALYSIS

WITH SPSS SOFTWARE

ITEM ANALYSIS

Technique to improve test items and instruction

11. Administer Tests12. Conduct Item Analysis

1. Review National

and Professional Standards

7. Develop New Test Questions8. Review Test Questions

13. Standard Setting Study14. Set Passing Standard

9. Assemble Operational Test Forms

10. Produce Printed Tests Mat.

2. Convene National Advisory

Committee

3. Develop Domain, Knowledge and Skills

StatementsConduct NeedsAnalysis

5. Construct Table of Specifications

6. Develop Test Design

TEST DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

WHAT IS ITEM ANALYSIS ? process that examines student

responses to individual test items assessing quality items and the test as a whole

valuable in improving items which will be used again in later tests and eliminate ambiguous or misleading items

valuable for increasing instructors' skills in test construction, and

identifying specific areas of course content which need greater emphasis or clarity.

SEVERAL PURPOSES

1. More diagnostic information on students

• Classroom level: • determine questions most found very

difficult/ guessing on - • reteach that concept

• questions all got right – • don't waste more time on this area

• find wrong answers students are choosing-• identify common misconceptions

• Individual level: • isolate specific errors the students

made

2. Build future tests, revise test items to make them better

• know how much work in writing good questions

• SHOULD NOT REUSE WHOLE TESTS --> diagnostic teaching means responding to needs of students, so after a few years a test bank is build up and choose a tests for the class

• can spread difficulty levels across your blueprint (TOS)

3. Part of continuing professional development

• doing occasional item analysis will help become a better test writer

• documenting just how good your evaluation is

• useful for dealing with parents or administrators if there's ever a dispute

• once you start bringing out all these impressive looking statistics, parents and administrators will believe why some students failed.

CLASSICAL ITEM ANALYSIS STATISTICS

•Reliability (test level statistic)

•Difficulty (item level statistic)

•Discrimination (item level statistic)

TEST LEVEL STATISTIC

Quality of the Test

• Reliability and Validity

• Reliability Consistency of measurement

• Validity Truthfulness of response

• Overall Test Quality

• Individual Item Quality

RELIABILITY

• refers to the extent to which the test is likely to produce consistent scores.

Characteristics: 1. The intercorrelations among the items --

the greater/stronger the relative number of positive relationships are, the greater

the reliability.

2. The length of the test – a test with more items will have a higher reliability, all other things being equal.

3. The content of the test -- generally, the more diverse the subject matter tested and the testing techniques used, the lower the reliability.

4. Heterogeneous groups of test takers

TYPES OF RELIABILITY

•Stability1. Test – Retest

•Stability2. Inter – rater / Observer/ Scorer

• applicable for mostly essay questions

• Use Cohen’s Kappa Statistic

•Equivalence3. Parallel-Forms/ Equivalent

Used to assess the consistency of the results of two tests constructed in the same way from the same content domain.

• Internal Consistency• Used to assess the consistency of results

across items within a test.

4. Split – Half

•5. Kuder-Richardson Formula 20 / 21

Correlation is determined from a single administration of a test through a study of score variances

•6. Cronbach's Alpha (a)

ReliabilityIndices Interpretation

.91 and above Excellent reliability; at the level of the best standardized tests

.81 - .90 Very good for a classroom test

.71 - .80Good for a classroom test; in the range of most.

There are probably a few items which could be improved.

.61 - .70

Somewhat low. This test needs to be supplemented by other measures (e.g., more tests) to determine grades. There are probably some items which could be improved.

.51 - .60

Suggests need for revision of test, unless it is quite short (ten or fewer items). The test definitely needs to be supplemented by other measures (e.g., more tests) for grading.

.50 or belowQuestionable reliability. This test should not

contribute heavily to the course grade, and it needs revision.

TEST ITEM STATISTIC

Item DifficultyPercent answering correctly

Item DiscriminationHow well the item "functions“

How “valid” the item is based on the total test score criterion

WHAT IS A WELL-FUNCTIONING TEST ITEM?

• how many students got it correct?

(DIFFICULTY)

• which students got it correct?

(DECRIMINATION)

THREE IMPORTANT INFORMATION ON QUALITY OF TEST ITEMS

• Item difficulty: measure whether an item was too easy or too hard.

• Item discrimination: measure whether an item discriminated between students who knew the material well and students who did not.

• Effectiveness of alternatives: Determination whether distracters (incorrect but plausible answers) tend to be marked by the less able students and not by the more able students.

ITEM DIFFICULTY

• Item difficulty is simply the percentage of students who answer an item correctly. In this case, it is also equal to the item mean.

Diff = # of students choosing correctly

  total # of students

• The item difficulty index ranges from 0 to 100; the higher the value, the easier the question.

ITEM DIFFICULTY LEVEL: DEFINITION

The percentage of students who answered the item correctly.

High(Difficult)

Medium(Moderate)

Low(Easy)

<= 30% > 30% AND < 80% >=80%

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

ITEM DIFFICULTY LEVEL: SAMPLE

Item No.

No. Correct Answers

% Correct

Difficulty Level

1 15

2 25

3 35

4 45

Number of students who answered each item = 50

30 High

50 Medium

70 Medium

90 Low

ITEM DIFFICULTY LEVEL: QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION

• Is a test that nobody failed too easy?

• Is a test on which nobody got 100% too difficult?

•Should items that are “too easy” or “too difficult” be thrown out?

ITEM DISCRIMINATION

• Traditionally, using high and low scoring groups (upper 27 % and lower 27%)

• Computerized analyses provide more accurate assessment of the discrimination power of items since it accounts all responses rather than just high and low scoring groups.

• Equivalent to point-biserial correlation. It provides estimate the degree an individual item is measuring the same thing as the rest of the items.

WHAT IS ITEM DISCRIMINATION?

• Generally, students who did well on the exam should select the correct answer to any given item on the exam.

• The Discrimination Index distinguishes for each item between the performance of students who did well on the exam and students who did poorly.

INDICES OF DIFFICULTY AND DISCRIMINATION(BY HOPKINS AND ANTES)

Index Difficulty Discrimination

0.86 above Very Easy To be discarded

0.71 – 0.85 Easy To be revised

0.30 – 0.70 Moderate Very Good items

0.15 – 0.29 Difficult To be revised

0.14 below Very Difficult

To be discarded

ITEM DISCRIMINATION: QUESTIONS / DISCUSSION

•What factors could contribute to low item discrimination between the two groups of students?

•What is a likely cause for a negative discrimination index?

ITEM ANALYSIS PROCESS

SAMPLE TOS

Remember Understand Apply Total

Section A

4(1,3,7,9)

6 10 20

Section B

5(2,5,8,11,15

)

5 4 14

Section C

3(6,17,21)

7 6 16

Total 12 18 20 50

STEPS IN ITEM ANALYSIS

1. Code the test items:- 1 for correct and 0 for

incorrect- Vertical – columns (item

numbers)- Horizontal – rows

(respondents/students)

TEST ITEMSNo. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1

011

12

13

14

. . . . 50

1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1

2 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1

3 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0

4 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0

5 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 0

6 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1

7 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1

8 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0

2. IN SPSS:

Analyze-Scale-Reliability analysis – (drag/place variables to Item box) – Statistics – Scale if item deleted – ok.

• ****** Method 1 (space saver) will be used for this analysis ******

• R E L I A B I L I T Y A N A L Y S I S - S C A L E (A L P H A)

• Item-total Statistics

• Scale Scale Corrected

• Mean Variance Item- Alpha

• if Item if Item Total if Item

• Deleted Deleted Correlation Deleted

• VAR00001 14.4211 127.1053 .9401 .9502

• VAR00002 14.6316 136.8440 .7332 .9542

• VAR00022 14.4211 129.1410 .7311 .9513

• VAR00023 14.4211 127.1053 .4401 .9502

• VAR00024 14.6316 136.8440 -.0332 .9542

• VAR00047 14.4737 128.6109 .8511 .9508

• VAR00048 14.4737 128.8252 .8274 .9509

• VAR00049 14.0526 130.6579 .5236 .9525

• VAR00050 14.2105 127.8835 .7533 .9511

• Reliability Coefficients

• N of Cases = 57.0 N of Items = 50

• Alpha = .9533

3. In the output dialog box:

•Alpha placed at the bottom

• the corrected item total correlation is the point biserial correlation as bases for index of test reliability

4. Count the number of items discarded and fill up summary item analysis table.

TEST ITEM RELIABILITY ANALYSIS SUMMARY (SAMPLE)

Test Level of Difficulty

Number of Items

% Item Number

Math Very Easy 1 2 1

(50 items)

Easy 2 4 2,5

Moderate 10 20 3,4,10,15…

Difficult 30 60 6,7,8,9,11,…

Very Difficult

7 14 16,24,32…

5. Count the number of items retained based on the cognitive domains in the TOS. Compute the percentage per level of difficulty.

Remember

Understand

Apply

N Ret N Ret N Ret

A 4 1 6 3 10

3

B 5 3 5 3 4 2C 3 2 7 4 6 3

Total 12 6 18 10 20

8

% 50% 56% 40%

Overall

24/50 = 48%

•Realistically: Do item analysis to your most important tests

• end of unit tests, final exams --> summative evaluation• common exams with other teachers(departmentalized exam)• common exams gives bigger sample to work with, which is good•makes sure that questions other teacher s prepared are working for your class

ITEM ANALYSIS is one area where even a lot of otherwise very good classroom teachers fall down:

• they think they're doing a good job;

• they think they've doing good evaluation;

• but without doing item analysis,

• They don’t really know.

ITEM ANALYSIS is not an end in itself, •no point unless you use it to revise items, and

•helps students on the basis of information you get out of it.

END OF PRESENTATION…

THANK U FOR LISTENING…

HAVE A RELIABLE AND ENJOYABLE DAY….