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Psychometric Analysis

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82 views2 pages

Psychometric Analysis

Uploaded by

api-568999633
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Psychometric Analysis

1. This may have been a fairly easy question based on the difficulty index of 0.9. Most
students answered this correctly on the exam. The discrimination index is also low, so it
is not adequately differentiating high-achieving learners from low-achieving learners on
this particular exam. In addition, all of the incorrect answers were (a) and no students
chose answers (c) or (d). While the Q index is acceptable for this item, 0.84, I may
consider revising the stem or the answer choices. Items (c) and (d) could be too far-
fetched to be believable answers for students.
2. This appears to be a well-written question, assuming it is not intended to differentiate
between high and low-ability learners for this particular exam. The Q index is acceptable,
at 1.19. The difficulty index is slightly outside the suggested range for differentiating
between learners and the discrimination index is only 0.4 so this is not a question that is
likely useful in differentiation. All distractors were chosen by at least one student,
although I may suggest taking a closer look at distractor (b) as only 2/243 test takers
chose this option.
3. This question needs to be revised or removed from the test score. The Q index is <0.65
(0.53) and only 36% of the students answered this question correctly. It is possible this
test question was mis-keyed or there is some other flaw in the stem that made students
answer incorrectly. Not only are students answering incorrectly, the discrimination index
indicates that it is not differentiating high and low-performing students well.
4. A decreasing Kuder-Richardson 20 metric indicates that there is decreasing internal
reliability in the examination over time. \Since this is the exact same test semester after
semester, students may be sharing answers to the test between courses. This could falsely
elevate student scores as more questions are discussed and retained in student memory
over time, leading to decreasing reliability. It could also be that the instructor has updated
the course materials, but not updated the exam.
5. Psychometric indices may be helpful in determining test questions that need to be phased
out of an exam after a period of time. A test question that has been unchanged for years
may have a high difficulty index with a low discrimination index, indicating that students
have discussed this question with peers and all are answering correctly regardless of their
actual knowledge of the content. Academic dishonesty may be suspected if a typically
low-performing student consistently answers questions correctly that have a high
discrimination index.
6. It is possible the student is doing better than he thinks, especially if he has always been a
high performer. By looking at questions that the student got correct and that have a high
discrimination index, you could help convince the student that he is still in the top of his
class. In addition, sharing his score in comparison to the class average, highest and lowest
scores will help him estimate where exactly he falls in terms of performance. However,
the student should be cautioned that these values represent only a single assessment and
not the overall performance of students in the class to date. However, if you look at the
psychometric data and note that the student answered questions incorrectly that had a
high difficulty index, then he is likely not understanding the more fundamental concepts
in the course that most students are grasping. If this is the case, he should meet with
course content experts to further discuss and identify areas where he can improve.

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