Item Analysis and Validation (Group 5)

ITEM ANALYSIS AND
VALIDATION
INTRODUCTION
 The teachers normally prepares a draft o 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 A 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 teachers:
Item Difficulty
Discrimination Index
Item Difficulty – 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 o
students. Thus:
Item difficulty=number o students with the correct answer

total number o students
The item difficulty is usually expressed in percentage
Example:
What is the item difficulty index of an item if 25
students are unable to answer it correctly while 75
answered it correctly?
Here the total number of students is 100, hence, the

item difficulty index is 75/100 or 75%
Range of difficulty Interpretation Action
index
0 – 0.25
difficult Revise or discard
0. 26 – 0. 75 Right difficulty retain
Easy
0.76 – above Revise or discard
Difficult items – tend to discriminate between those who
know and those who does 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 o students. Such a measure is called
an index of discrimination
An easy way to derive such a measure is to measure how
difficult an item is with respect to those in the upper 25%
of the class and how difficult it is respect to those in the
lower 25 % of the class. If the upper 25% found the item
easy yet the lower 25% found it difficult then the item can
discriminate properly between these two groups. Thus:
Index of discrimination = DU – DL
Example : Obtain the index of discrimination of an item
If the upper 25% of the class had a difficulty index of 0.
60 (i,e. 60% of the upper got the correct answer) 25% of
the class had difficulty index of 0. 20
DU= 0.60while DL= 0.20, thus index of discrimination

=.60 - .20 = 40.
 Theoretically, the index o discrimination can range from
-1.0 ( when DU= 0 and DL = 1) to 1.0 (when DU = 1
and DL = 0
 When the discrimination is equal to -1; then this means
that all of the lower 25% o the students got the correct
answer while all of the upper 25% go25% got the wrong
answer. In a sense, such as index discriminates correctly
between the two groups but the item itself is highly
questionable.
 on the other hand, if the index discrimination is 1.0,
then this means that all o the lower 25% failed to get
the correct answer. This is perfectly discriminating item
and is the ideal item that should be included in the test.
 As in the case of index difficulty, we have the
following rule of thumb:
Index Range Interpretation Action
Can discriminate but the item is discarded

-1.0 to -.50 questionable
-.55 to 45 non- discriminating Revised
Discriminating item include

.46 to 1.0
Formula:
Difficulty index = no. of students getting the correct answer

Total
The discrimination index can be similarly be computed:
DU = no. of students in the upper 25% with correct response
No. of students in the upper 25%
=15/20 = .75 or 75%

DL= no. of students in lower 75% with correct response
no. of students in the lower 25%
=5/20 = .25 or 25%
Discrimination index = DU – DL
=. 75 -.25
=.50 or 50 %
Thus, the item also has a “ good discriminating power”.
Basic Item Analysis Statistics
The Michigan state university measurement and

evaluation department reports a number of item statistics
which aid in evaluating the effectiveness of an item.
Index of difficulty- the proportional of the total group who

got the item wrong. “Thus a high index indicates a
difficult item and a low index indicates an easy item.
Index of Discrimination- is the difference between the proportion of
the upper group who got an item right and the proportion of the lower group
who got the item right.
More Sophisticated Discrimination Index
 Item Discrimination – refers to the ability of an item to differentiate
among students on the basis of how well they know the material being
tested.
 A good item is one that has good discriminating ability and has a
sufficient level of difficulty (not too difficult nor too easy).
Item-Analysis Procedure for Norm
Provides the following information:
1. The difficulty of an item

2. The discriminating power of an item
3. The effectiveness of each alternatives
Benefits Derived from Item Analysis
1. It provides useful information for class discussion of the test.
2. It provides data which helps students improve their learning.
3. It provides insights and skills that leads to the preparation of
better tests in the future.
Index of Difficulty
 P= Ru + R L x 100
T
Where:
R u - The number in the upper group who
answered the item correctly.
R L – The number in the lower group who
answered the item correctly.
T – The total number who tried the item.
Index of Item Discriminating Power

D= R u + RL
½T
Where:
P- percentage who answered the item
correctly (index of difficulty)
R – number who answered the item correctly.
T – Total number who tried the item.
P = 8 x 100 = 40%
20
The smaller the percentage figure the more difficult the item.
Estimate the item discriminating power using the formula below
D = R u - RL = 6 – 2 =.40
½T 10
The discriminating power of an item is reported as a decimal fraction;
maximum discriminating power is indicated by an index of 1.00.
Maximum discrimination is usually found at the 50% level of
difficulty.
0.00 – 0.20 = very difficult
0.21 – 0. 80 = moderate difficult
0.81 – 1.00 = very easy
Validation
 After performing the item analysis and revising the items

which need revision, the next step is to validate the instrument.
 The purpose of validation is to determine the characteristics of
the whole test itself, namely, the validity and reliability of the
test.
 Validation is the process o collecting and analyzing evidence to
support the meaningfulness and usefulness of the test.
Validity
 is the extent to which measures what it purports to measure or

referring to the appropriateness, correctness, meaningfulness of
the specific decision a teacher makes based on the test results.
There are three main types of evidences that
may be collected:
1. Content- related evidence o validity

2. Criterion-related evidence of validity
3. Construct-related evidence of validity
Content-related evidence of validity
 Refers to the content and format of the instrument
 How appropriate is the content?
 How comprehensive?
 Does it logically get at the intended variable?
 How adequately does the sample o items or questions represent the
content to be assessed?
Criterion- related evidence of validity
 Refers to the relationship between scores obtained using the

instrument and scores obtained using one or moreb other test(often
called criterion)
 How strong is this relationship?
 How well do such scores estimate present or predict future
performance of a certain type?
Construct-related evidence of validity
 Refers to the nature of the psychological construct or
characteristics being measured by the test.
 How well does a measure of the construct explain differences
in the behavior of the individuals pr their performance on a
certain task.
Usual procedure for determining content validity
 They also place a check mark in front of each objective not
assessed by any item in the test.
 The teacher then rewrites any items so checked and resubmits
to experts and /or writes new items to cover those objectives
not heretofore by the existing test
 This continues until the experts approve all items and also
when the experts agree that all of the objectives are sufficiently
covered by the test.
Obtaining evidence for criterion-related validity
 The teacher usually compare scores on the test in question with the
scores on some other independent criterion test which presumably has
already high validity.
 Another type o validity is called the predictive validity wherein the test
scores in the instrument is correlated with scores on later performance
of the feelings.
Grade point average
Test score Very good Good Needs to improves
high 20 10 5
average 10 25 5
Low 1 1o 14
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ITEM ANALYSIS AND

 The teachers normally prepares a draft o the test. Such a

 There are two important characteristics of an item that will

Item difficulty=number o students with the correct answer

Here the total number of students is 100, hence, the

0. 26 – 0. 75 Right difficulty retain

 Easy items – cannot discriminate between those two

DU= 0.60while DL= 0.20, thus index of discrimination

Can discriminate but the item is discarded

-.55 to 45 non- discriminating Revised

Discriminating item include

Difficulty index = no. of students getting the correct answer

=15/20 = .75 or 75%

The Michigan state university measurement and

Index of difficulty- the proportional of the total group who

1. The difficulty of an item

 After performing the item analysis and revising the items

 is the extent to which measures what it purports to measure or

1. Content- related evidence o validity

 Refers to the relationship between scores obtained using the

Test score Very good Good Needs to improves

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