ITEM ANALYSIS AND VALIDATION

Example:

INTRODUCTION

What is the item difficulty index of an

item if 25 students are unable to answer it
correctly while 75 answered it correctly?

The Teacher normally prepares a draft of

the test. Such a draft is subjected to item
analysis and validation to ensure that the
final version of the test would be useful and
functional.
PHASES OF PREPARING TEST
Try-out phase
Item analysis phase
Item revision phase
ITEM ANALYSIS
There are two important characteristics of
an item that will be of interest of the
teacher:
Item Difficulty
Discrimination Index
Item Difficulty or the difficulty of an item
is defined as the number of students who
are able to answer the item correctly
divided by the total number of students.
Thus:
Item difficulty = no. of students with the correct
answer
Total no.of students

The item difficulty is usually expressed in

percentage.

Here the total number of students is

100, hence, the item difficulty index is
75/100 or 75%.
Range of
difficulty
index

Interpreta
tion

0-0.25

Difficult

0.26-0.75

Right
difficulty
Easy

0.76 above

Action
Revise or
discard
Retain
Revise or
discard

Difficult items tend to discriminate between

those who know and those who does not
know the answer.
Easy items cannot discriminate between
those two groups of students.
We are therefore interested in deriving a
measure that will tell us whether an item
can discriminate between these two groups
of students. Such a measure is called an
index of discrimination.
Prepared by: Almairah P. Ali