Item Analysis and Marks - Assignment Example

Item Analysis and Marks Item analysis refers to a group of procedures that are used in the assessment of the quality of exam items. There are two types of item analysis: qualitative and quantitative item analysis. Qualitative item analysis procedures include the careful proofreading of the exam to identify typographical errors, grammatical cues and for appropriateness of the reading level of the material before administration. Qualitative item analysis includes a thorough analysis that uses three numerical indicators: item difficulty, item discrimination and distractor power statistics (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010). The two item analysis procedures are beneficial to learning and assessment because they help improve the quality of an exam by identifying items that prepare candidates for retention, revision or removal. Item analysis identifies both good and deficient items and clarifies concepts that the examinees have not mastered (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010).
The risks that come if these items are not administered are that the wrong impression will be got of the student that is not true. Students may fail because there were errors that gave rise to multiple interpretations and not that they did not know. An example of imperfect test may be for example: who was the President of America between 2000 and 2008? A second one may be: Assess the importance of not examining students after end of the course. It is important for the teacher to use both qualitative item analysis and quantitative item analysis because they help to fine tune a test and build reliability and credibility into a test. When we look at qualitative analysis we find that it is subjective as opposed to quantitative analysis and therefore a combination is important to eliminate errors and build credibility into the test (J., 2009).
The authors say that marks reflect only academic achievement and not other factors like attitude and effort because of many reasons. One is that factors like attitudes and effort cannot be graded in terms of marks and therefore it would be difficult to rate a student at the end of the learning period. Secondly students come to school to gain knowledge in a specific field and they are subjected to a syllabus and content that thy must cover in order to show their understanding of various aspects of the course. Their understanding of the knowledge covered in the syllabus can only be done by giving them a test to using marks to gauge their achievement (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010). Unfortunately attitudes and efforts do not compose the content of the syllabus because of the difficulty in assessing them. Third factors like attitudes and effort are subjective such that various teachers will give varied information about the students’ efforts and attitudes and thus will lead to confusion in giving the overall image of the students’ achievements. Marks make it very easy to rate students as they are objective (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010).
The incorporation of these factors into the marking data will affect instructional decisions that need to be made simply because the modes of instructions will need to be changed. The current ones only reflect or help in ensuring that the student will be graded at the end. If efforts and attitudes were included it means that other methods need to be devised both for instructions and for assessment. It is impossible to use the current grading system in rating learners because they do not define what effort and attitude is on the reports and how they can be measured by the teacher (Allen, 2005).
References
Allen, J. D. (2005). Grades as valid measures of academic achievement of Classroom Learning. Education Psychology, 78(5):218-223.
J., G.-E. W. (2009). Detecting gender bias through test item analysis. The Physics teacher, 47(3):175-179.
Kubiszyn, T., & Borich, G. (2010). Educational testing & measurement: Classroom application and practice (9th ed.). Hoboken, NJ.: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Read More