CHARACTERISTICS OF

GOOD EXAMINATION
Dr. Syed Hasan Shoaib
 Characteristics of good
examination

• Validity

• Objectivity

• Reliability

• Feasibility
Is the examination measuring
what it is intended to measure?
• The content of assessment (are
the right things being tested)
• The effect of learning (are the
students learning what we want
them to learn?)
• The assessment methods (are
we using the most appropriate
methods for the purpose?)
 VALIDITY
• In other words, it is the degree to
which the test ‘truly’ measures
what it is intended to measure.
Factors affecting Validity
• Validity improves with:
 defining the
curriculum/syllabus
 mapping exam content
against the curriculum
 emphasis on essential and
important curriculum content
 selecting appropriate methods
 Types of validity

• face validity, content validity,

construct validity, predictive
validity and concurrent validity
• Validity does not have a numeric
value. It is a judgement based on
the above mentioned evidence.
 Types of validity
• Face validity asks, “does the test
‘appear’ to evaluate what the
assessors want to judge?”

• Content validity asks, “how well

does the sample of assessment
tasks ‘represent’ the domain to be
measured? In other words, is the
sampling adequate?”
 Types of validity

• Construct validity
Is this test actually assessing what
I want to assess?

• Predictive validity asks, “how

well does performance on this test
predict performance in the future?”
 Types of validity
Concurrent Validity:
This refers to the degree to which scores on a
test correlate with the scores on an
established test administered at the same time
• Administer the new test
• Administer the established test
• Correlate the two sets of scores
• The greater the positive correlation, the
greater the reliability
 How can you make the
exams Objective?
• An exam is ‘objective’ if the
acceptable answer to the questions
is defined prior to its
administration

• Any competent person given a key

can mark it.
 How do you define
Reliability of examination?
• restricting measurement errors
within acceptable limits
• is concerned with how
consistent test scores or other
assessment results are from one
measurement to another.
How can you increase the
Reliability?
good item design,
increasing testing time,
computer marking,
item-banking and re-use of proven
psychometric quality and
examiner training.
What is Feasibility of an
examination?
• An exam should be cost beneficial
and easy to score.

• It should not be a burden on

financial and human resources of
the organization.