Item Analysis

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Item Analysis

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.

Preparing Data for Item Analysis

1. Arrange test scores from highest to lowest. This ranking is based on the student’s total score
on the test.
2. Get one-third of the papers from the highest scores and the other score third from the
lowest score. These two extreme sets of examination papers are the criterion groups. The
first is the upper group and the latter is the lower group. The middle group is not used in the
analysis of test items.
3. Record separately the number of times each alternative. Was chosen by the students in both
groups.
4. Add the number of the correct answers to each made by the combined upper and lower
groups.
5. Compute the index of difficulty from each item following the formula

)

IDF= ( NRC
TS
100

Where: IDF= Index of difficulty

NRC= number of students responding correctly to an item

TS = total number of students in the upper and lower limit groups

6. Compute the index of discrimination based on the formula

)

IDN= (
CU −CL
NSG

Where: IDN = index of discrimination


CU = number of correct responses of the upper group
CL = number of correct responses of the lower group
NSG = number of students per group
Sample item data and the resulting indices derived from the procedures described below.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Answers Total No. of Difficulty H-L Discrimination


Correct Answers Index Index

Item Group A B C D `

1 H 20 3 14 2 1 21 52.5 7 0.35

L 20 10 7 3 0

2 H 20 0 0 18 2 27 67.5 9 0.45

L 20 0 3 9 8

3 H 20 4 8 4 4 10 25.0 6 0.30

L 20 10 2 4 4

4 H 20 3 3 4 10 14 35.0 6 0.30

L 20 2 4 10 4

5 H 20 15 2 2 1 10 40.0 14 0.70

L 20 1 10 4 5

*Italicized numbers indicate correct answers Number of students tested = 60

Using Information about Index of Difficulty

The difficulty of a test item is important because it tells a teacher something meaningful about the
comprehension of or performance on material or task contained in an item. The item data presented
above reveals that item 2 is easy as its difficulty index is 67.5%. The same is true with item 1 with an
estimated difficulty index of 52.5%.

The higher the value of the difficulty index, the easier is the item. This because the difficulty index
represents the percentage of the total number of students answering an item correctly. Thus, there is an
inverse relationship between the index and what it purports to represent. For an item to be considered
a good item, its difficulty index should be 50%. An item with 50% difficulty is neither easy nor difficult. If
an item has a difficult index of 67.5% this means that it is 67.5% easy and 32.5% difficult. Information on
the index difficulty of an item can help teacher decide whether a test should be revised, retained or
modified.

Difficulty index of attest item can be interpreted with the use of the following table of equivalents:

Range Difficulty Level

20 & below Very difficult

21 -- 40 Difficult

41 – 60 Average

61 -- 80 Easy

81 & Above Very easy

Using Information about Index of Discrimination

The index of discrimination, as already pointed out, tells a teacher the degree to which a test
item differentiates the high achievers from the low achievers in his/her class. With regard to item
discrimination, a test item than may have positive or negative discriminating power.

An item has appositive discriminating power when more students from the upper group got the
right answer than those from the lower group conversely, when more students from the lower group
got the correct answer on an item than those from the upper group, the item has a negative
discriminating power. There are instances when an item has a zero discriminating power. This happens
when there is an equal number of students from both upper & lower groups who got the right answer to
a test item. Items with negative zero discriminating powers have to be discarded.

From the sample item data presented earlier, it can be noted that item 5 has the highest
discriminating power as it calculated index of discrimination of 0.70. This means that the item 5 can
differentiate high & low achievers.

Table of equivalents in interpreting obtained index of discrimination

Range Verbal Description

. 40 & Above Very Good Item

. 30 - .39 Good Item

. 20 - .29 Fair
. 09 - 19 Poor Item

A test item can be retained when its level of difficulty is average and discriminating power is
positive. It has to be rejected when it is either easy/very easy or difficult/very difficult and its
discriminating power is negative or zero. On the other hand, an item can be modified when its difficulty
level is average and its discriminating index is negative.

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