Chapter 9

Interpreting Test Scores

Score the test results in a set of numbers known as raw scores. To make the raw scores
comprehensible, they can be arranged in a frequency distribution or displayed graphically as a
histogram or frequency polygon. Once a test has been scored, teachers need to interpret the
results and use these interpretations to make grading, selection, placement, or other decisions. To
interpret test scores accurately, teachers need to analyze overall test performance and individual
test items, and use this data to draw valid conclusions about student performance. This
information also helps teachers prepare for posttest discussions with students about the exam. In
this case to interpret student test scores, teachers need to know the way or method. There are
several methods that will be introduced in this paper, namely Frequency Distribution, Measures
Of Central Tendency, Measures Of Dispersion, Item Analysis, and Moderation.
A. Frequency Distribution

The frequency of a value is the number of times it occurs in a dataset. A frequency distribution
is the pattern of frequencies of a variable. It’s the number of times each possible value of a
variable occurs in a dataset. There are four types of frequency distributions namely:

a. Ungrouped frequency distributions

The number of observations of each value of a variable.You can use this type of frequency
distribution for categorical variables.

-How to make Ungrouped frequency table

 When we need to make an ungrouped frequency table, we must know about the step to make it,
and we must have the data that we used to make it in to the table. So the first thing that we need
to do namely create a table with two columns and as many rows as there are values of the
variable. Label the first column using the variable name and label the second column

“Frequency.” Enter the values in the first column. For ordinal variables, the values should be
ordered from smallest to largest in the table rows. For nominal variables, the values can be in any
order in the table. You may wish to order them alphabetically or in some other logical order. And
next, Count the frequencies. The frequencies are the number of times each value occurs. Enter
the frequencies in the second column of the table beside their corresponding values. Especially if
your dataset is large, it may help to count the frequencies by tallying. Add a third column called
“Tally.” As you read the observations, make a tick mark in the appropriate row of the tally
column for each observation. Count the tally marks to determine the frequency. Here’s the
example of ungroupws Frequency Table

Example 1.1

b. Grouped frequency distributions: The number of observations of each class interval of a

variable. Class intervals are ordered groupings of a variable’s values.You can use this type of
frequency distribution for quantitative variables.

-How to make grouped frequency table

To make a grouped frequency table It just a little bit different from an ungrouped table
frequency. So the first step we need to divide the variable into class intervals. Below is one
method to divide a variable into class intervals. Different methods will give different answers,
but there’s no agreement on the best method to calculate class intervals. Calculate the range.
Subtract the lowest value in the dataset from the highest. Decide the class interval width. There
are no firm rules on how to choose the width, but the following formula is a

rule of thumb:
Calculate the class intervals. Each interval is defined by a lower limit and upper limit.
Observations in a class interval are greater than or equal to the lower limit and less than the
upper limit. The lower limit of the first interval is the lowest value in the dataset. Add the class
interval width to find the upper limit of the first interval and the lower limit of the second
variable. Keep adding the interval width to calculate more class intervals until you exceed the
highest value. The next step is create a table with two columns and as many rows as there are
class intervals. Label the first column using the variable name and label the second column
“Frequency.” Enter the class intervals in the first column. For the last step is count the

frequencies. The frequencies are the number of observations in each class interval. You can
count by tallying if you find it helpful. Enter the frequencies in the second column of the table
beside their corresponding class intervals. Here is the example group frequency table.

Example 1.2

c. Relative frequency distributions

The proportion of observations of each value or class interval of a variable. You can use this
type of frequency distribution for any type of variable when you’re more interested in comparing
frequencies than the actual number of observations. And the last, Cumulative frequency
distributions: The sum of the frequencies less than or equal to each value or class interval of a
variable. You can use this type of frequency distribution for ordinal or quantitative variables
when you want to understand how often observations fall below certain values.

Frequency distributions are often displayed using frequency tables. A frequency table is an
effective way to summarize or organize a dataset. It’s usually composed of two columns namely
the values or class intervals and their frequencies. The method for making a frequency table
differs between the four types of frequency distributions. You can follow the guides below or use
software such as Excel, SPSS, or R to make a frequency table.

-How to make relative frequency table

So the next type of table frequency is relative frequency table. So the way to make this table are
first create an ungrouped or grouped frequency table and second add a third column to the table
for the relative frequencies. To calculate the relative frequencies, divide each frequency by the
sample size. The sample size is the sum of the frequencies. Here the example :

Example 1.3

d. Cumulative frequency table

So last type of the table frequency is cumulative frequency table. So in make this type we need
to create an ungrouped or grouped frequency table for an ordinal or quantitative variable.
Cumulative frequencies don’t make sense for nominal variables because the values have no order
—one value isn’t more than or less than another value. Next add a third column to the table for
the cumulative frequencies. The cumulative frequency is the number of observations less than or
equal to a certain value or class interval. To calculate the relative frequencies, add each
frequency to the frequencies in the previous rows. Remember If you want to calculate the
cumulative relative frequency, add another column and divide each cumulative frequency by the
sample size. Here the example :

Example 1.4
B. Central Tendency

Central tendency is a descriptive summary of a dataset through a single value that reflects the
center of the data distribution. Along with the variability (dispersion) of a dataset, central
tendency is a branch of descriptive statistics. The central tendency is one of the most
quintessential concepts in statistics. Although it does not provide information regarding the
individual values in the dataset, it delivers a comprehensive summary of the whole dataset.
Measures of central Tendency, Generally, the central tendency of a dataset can be described
using the following measures:

a) Mean (Average): Represents the sum of all values in a dataset divided by the total number of
the values.

b) Median: The middle value in a dataset that is arranged in ascending order (from the
smallest value to the largest value). If a dataset contains an even number of values, the median of
the dataset is the mean of the two middle values.

c) Mode: Defines the most frequently occurring value in a dataset. In some cases, a dataset may
contain multiple modes, while some datasets may not have any mode at all.
 Even though the measures above are the most commonly used to define central tendency, there
are some other measures, including, but not limited to, geometric mean, harmonic mean,
midrange, and geometric median. The selection of a central tendency measure depends on the
properties of a dataset. For instance, the mode is the only central tendency measure for
categorical data, while a median works best with ordinal data.

Although the mean is regarded as the best measure of central tendency for quantitative data,
that is not always the case. For example, the mean may not work well with quantitative datasets
that contain extremely large or extremely small values. The extreme values may distort the mean.
Thus, you may consider other measures. The measures of central tendency can be found using a
formula or definition. Also, they can be identified using a frequency distribution graph. Note that
for datasets that follow a normal distribution, the mean, median, and mode are located on the
same spot on the graph.

C. Measure of dispersion.

In statistics, dispersion is the degree to which a distribution is stretched or squeezed. Measures

of Dispersion differ with location or central tendency, and together they are one of the most used
properties of distributions. Most common measures of statistical dispersion are :

1.) Mean deviation

Mean Deviation is a statistical measure to find the average deviation of values from the mean
in a sample. How to calculate Mean Deviation:

1.) Calculate the average of the observations,

2.) Calculate the difference of each observation from the mean (deviations of all the
observations),

3.) Average all the deviations.

2.) Variance

The Variance is a degree of variability. It is determined by taking the average of squared

deviations from the mean. Variance represents the degree of spread in your data set. The further
spread the data, the larger the variance to the mean. The Standard Deviation is a measure of the
amount of variation of a set of values

3.) Standard deviation

The standard deviation of a random variable is the square root of its variance. A low standard
deviation shows that the values tend to be approaching the mean of the set, while a high
standard deviation indicates that the values are spread out across a wider range.
 4.) Range and Interquartile range.

The range is the difference between the highest and lowest values of a dataset. The Interquartile
Range(IQR), also called the mid-spread, is a measure of statistical dispersion, being equal to the
difference between 75th and 25th percentiles, or between upper and lower quartiles, IQR = Q3 −
Q1.In other words, the IQR is the first quartile subtracted from the third quartile. These quartiles
can be seen on a box plot on the data.It is a trimmed estimator, defined as the 25% trimmed
range, and is a commonly used robust measure of scale.

Applications of Measures of Dispersion A measure of spread also called a measure of

dispersion, is used to describe the variability in a sample or population. Measures of Dispersion
are used to estimate “normal” values of a dataset, measures of dispersion are important for
describing the spread of the data, or its variation around a central value. It is usually used in
conjunction with a measure of central tendencies, such as the mean or median, to provide an
overall description of a set of data.

D. Item analysis.

In Item Analysis calculation, the interpretation of the result is pretty much straightforward. The
only problem that might occur for beginner is familiarity with the data (or worst never analyze it
before). The more we analyze, the easier we could understand what happened inside the data. So
First and foremost, we have to remember that in medical education, it is common that student
have to be able to do or know certain skills/knowledge. Lets take Basic Life Support (BLS), as
the example. If you as the educationalist already set the standard that the student have to be able
to do BLS, understanding the all necessary knowledge to do BLS is a must. Therefore, if you
have question regarding BLS, we will expect the result to be “easy” (in column B). Why ?
Because every student will get the answer correct. In this case, having “easy” warning is not a
problem, and thus the question is not categorize as bad question. In empirical analysis There are
statistic analysis that we want to analyze namely Item difficulty, Item – total test correlations,
Item discrimination.

a. Item Difficulty

Item Difficulty is measuring how difficult the question to the students. It is a ratio between
student who can answer correctly to the total of the student who join the exam.

This ratio number range from 0 – 1. The more student could answer correctly, the higher the
number closer to 1. If the question is difficult (few students could answer) then the number close
to 0.

Let see simple example :

100 students join an exam with 100 questions. There are 65 students answer correctly in question
number 1.

This will give us an Item Difficulty of the question number one , 0.65.
b. Total test correlations.

This is a correlation between answering question correctly with the total score. For example, is it
answering correctly question number 2 correlate with the total score ? It is expected that if the
students answer number 2 correctly, they will have higher total scores, compare who answer
wrong.

In Psychometric library in R, the item criterion give us freedom to correlate item with Y
criterion (choose what you want to correlate with). In the script, I correlate item with total score
and the result is column G. It is a Point biserial correlation.

Conceptually, it is shown like below

This correlation assumes that the item score is a true dichotomy (MCQ only have one correct
answer). The r ranges between -1.00 and 1.00. If we find high positive values, means a good
item. On the other side, low or negative values are bad and you could consider to delete the item.

c. Item Descrimination

This is called D-index. It is the ability to distinguish between the students who understand the
material and who do not. It is calculates the proportion of high achievers and low achievers to
answer the item correctly. The value of D-index is between -1.0 and 1.0. So, in this value, a
high-positive values are good items. With the opposite condition, low or negative value are bad.
The simple explanation is, when the low-scorer student could answer the questions, means this
question cannot distinguish the ability of the student that well.

E. Moderating class intervals

The importance of moderating class intervals is to find out the average count of observations,
the difference from the average observations, and constraints on observations. Central tendency
is a branch of descriptive statistics. Central tendency is one of the most classic concepts in
statistics. While it doesn't provide information about individual values in a data set, it does
provide a comprehensive summary of the entire data set. Measures of Central Tendency In
general, the central tendency of a dataset can be described using the following steps: a) Mean
(average): Represents the sum of all values in a dataset divided by the total number of values. b)
Median: The middle value in a data set arranged in ascending order (from smallest to largest
value). If the data set contains even values, the median of the data set is the average of the two
middle values. c) Mode: Determines the value that appears most often in the data set. In some
cases, a data set may contain multiple modes, while some data sets may have no mode at all. The
choice of measure of central tendency depends on the properties of the dataset. For example,
mode is the only measure of central tendency for categorical data, while the median works best
with ordinal data. Although the mean is considered the best measure of central tendency for
quantitative data, it is not always the case. The measure of central tendency can be found using
formulas or definitions. Also, they can be identified using a frequency distribution chart.

Application of Measures of Dispersion A measure of dispersion, also called a measure of

dispersion, is used to describe the variability within a sample or population. A measure of
Dispersion is used to estimate the "normal" value of a data set, a measure of dispersion is
important to describe the spread of data, or its variation around a central value. Usually used in
conjunction with a measure of central tendency, such as the mean or median, to provide an
overall description of a data set.

Summary

So in the testing process, it is critical to consider any sources of bias or inaccuracy. Test-taker
weariness is one possible source of error, and it might affect test results if the person is drained
or loses concentration while taking the test. Cultural or linguistic disparities could also factor in
prejudice, as certain people may not be able to take specific assessments because of these factors.
When interpreting the results, these variables should be considered as they may affect the
validity of the test results.