Salale University

College Of Health Sciences

Department Of Nursing
Course: Nursing Education and Curriculum Development
Presentation: Item analysis and Item banking
BY: Group 5
Presented to: Dejene H (Msc, Asst. Ph.)
May,2023
Fiche, Ethiopia1
 Group members

Name Department ID No
Geleta Tola PCHN RM0077/15
Chaltu Tsehay PCHN RM0090/15
Mesfin Shifara AHN RM0185/15
Tamirat Mogasa PCHN RM0089/15
Regatu Bekele PCHN RM0086/15
Rahel Reta PCHN RM0189/15
Worku Daba AHN RM0193/15
Kenasa Ayana PCHN RM0081/15

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 Presentation outline

Introduction
. Objectives of items analysis
Purpose of item analysis
Steps in Item Analysis
Types of item analysis
Item bank
Features of item banking
References

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 Introduction

Item analysis is a post-examination evaluation and can provide

information about the quality of tests.

Is a statistical technique which is used for selecting and rejecting the
items of the test on the basis of their difficulty value and discriminated
power.

Item bank is a term for repository of test items that belongs to a testing
program, as well as all information pertaining to those items.
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 Objectives of item analysis

►To select appropriate items for the final draft

►To obtain the information about the difficulty value(DV) of all the
items.

►To provide discriminatory power(DI) to differentiate between capable

and less capable examines for the items.

►To provide modification to be made in some of the items

►To prepare the final draft properly (easy to difficult items).

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 Purpose of item analysis

♦ Evaluates the response pattern of each item within the group tested (How
many % have answered on each option).

♦ Evaluate the mastery of course content.

♦ Provide information about the level of difficulty of each question and the
ability of the test item to discriminate between the good and poor students.

♦ Also represents for the quality control of tests and examinations.

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 Purpose….

♦ It improves the reliability of objective tests.

♦ It provides a basis for revising and restructuring tests.

♦ It provides a basis for retaining or deleting specific items.

♦ Valuable for increasing instructors' skills in test construction, and

identifying specific areas of course content which need greater
emphasis or clarity

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 Con’t…
Item analysis can tell us;

Item Difficulty: It is about the exam question too easy or too hard?

When an item is one that every student either gets wrong or correct, it

decreases an exam’s reliability.

Item distractor analysis- whether all of the alternative function as

intended.

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 Con’t…

Item Discrimination

How well test discriminated between high and low score on the test

Does the exam question discriminate between students who understand

the material and those who do not?

Exam questions should evaluate the varying degrees of knowledge

students have on the material, reflected by the percentage correct on
exam questions.

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 Conditions for application of Item Analysis

 It is applicable only to questions scored dichotomously (1: 0) on the

MCQ type.

 It should not be applied if the total number of students are small (a

minimum of 20 students could be proposed as a practical criterion

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 Dichotomization

On the basis of obtained scores we have to consider only the top and
bottom percentage in any of the following:

 Considering Top 25% and Bottom 25%, discarding the middle 50% cases.

 Considering Top 33% and Bottom 33%, discarding the middle 34% cases.

 Considering Top 27% and Bottom 27%, discarding the middle 46% cases.

* From the above, the third one (Kelly’s Method of dichotomization)

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 Steps in Item Analysis

After the test is scored, arrange the test scores highest to lowest score.

Take 27% of the scores out of the highest scores and 27% of the scores
falling at bottom

 For each item, tally the number of students in each group who chose
each alternative.

Record these counts on a copy of test item next to each response item.

05/23/2023 Item Analysis By Admasu.B(BScN, MScN, Asst. Prof.) 12

 Con’t…

Count the number of right answer in highest group (R.H) and count the no of
right answer in lowest group (R.L)

Count the non-response (N.R) examinees

Calculate the difficulty and discrimination index of a question

Critically evaluate each question - manually as well using computers, SPSS

Interpretation the result

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 Methods/types of Item analysis

Done through calculating:

1. Difficulty index

2. Discrimination index

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 Difficulty index

An index for measuring the easiness or difficulty of a test question.

It is the percentage of students who have correctly answered a test question
(easiness index). (J.P. Guilford)

It varies/range from 0-100%.

Formula
H+L x 100
N
H= number of correct answers in the high group.
L= number of correct answers in the low group.
N= Total number of students in both groups (H+L).
05/23/2023 Item Analysis By Admasu.B(BScN, MScN, Asst. Prof.) 15
 Example
I. Choose the correct answer?
1. Which one of the following drugs cause gray baby syndrome?
a. Ceftriaxone b, chloramphenicol c. amoxicillin D. Ciprofloxacin
II. T/F.
2. Newborn baby can be bathed within 6hrs of delivery
Suppose 75 students appeared in this achieved test
1st we arrange the observed score in descended order.
Select highest score of 27% of students=20
Lowest score of 27% of students=20

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<25% difficult, 50-60% reliable,25-75% acceptable, >75% easier
Each group 27% Item 1 Item 2 Item 3
students
Upper group (20) 16 7 2
Lower group (20) 5 3 0
Total correct 21 10 2
response
Difficulty index RU+RL/ 0.25 0.05
T=21/40=0.525
Decision Acceptable acceptable difficult

Interpretation Select Select Reject

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 Difficulty index…

The higher the index the easier is the question.

In principle, a question with index between 25% and 75% is acceptable.

A test with index 50%-60% is very likely to be reliable.

* Item very difficult should be reviewed possible language, removed from

subsequent test and / or highlighted for an area for reinstruction.

* If almost all the students gets the item wrong there is either a problems
with the item or students didn’t get the concept

05/23/2023 Item Analysis By Admasu.B(BScN, MScN, Asst. Prof.) 18

 Discrimination index
An indicator showing how significantly a question discriminates between high
and low scorer students (vary from –1 to +1). Blood and Budd (1972)

Can be calculated by:

Diff. I= 2 x ( H- L)/N

H= number of correct answers in the high group.

L= number of correct answers in the low group.

N= Total number of students in both groups (H+L).

05/23/2023 Item Analysis By Admasu.B(BScN, MScN, Asst. Prof.) 19

 Discrimination index …

In calculating the discrimination index, the higher the

index denotes the more a question will distinguish between
high and low scorers.

In other words, it helps you to find out the best students.

05/23/2023 Item Analysis By Admasu.B(BScN, MScN, Asst. Prof.) 20

 Discrimination index …
0.4 and over: excellent question.

0.3-0.39 : Good question

0.2-0.29: marginal question-revise

Under 0.15: poor question- most likely to be discarded.

0: No discrimination at all

Negative number is a bad item.

05/23/2023 Item Analysis By Admasu.B(BScN, MScN, Asst. Prof.) 21

0- no discrimination at all <0.15 poor- discarded, 0.2-0.29 marginal-
revise, 0.3-0.39 good, >0.4% excellent, negative item is bad

Each group 27% Item 1 Item 2 Item 3

students
Upper group (20) 16 7 2
Lower group (20) 5 3 0
Difference of 11 4 2
response
Discriminating 2(H-L)/N=0.55 0.20 0.10
index
Decision Excellent Marginal, revise Poor
Interpretation select Revise Reject
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 Point biserial correlation
Point biserial correlation is used to correlate item score with the score of the whole test
Special case of the Pearson product moment correlation, where one variable binary ( right or wrong), and
the other is continuous (total raw test score)
1. Score the item as either right (1) or wrong(0)
2. Use point-biserial correlation
3. Interpret
rpb=

wrong
SX-Standard deviation the raw scores
P-proportion of students who gets the right answer
 -ve point biserial correlation means that the students who did well on the test missed the item, while those
poorly did test got the item right- this item should rewritten 23
 Types of discrimination index(D.I)
⁎ Zero discrimination:- is the item of the test is answered correctly or
know the answer by all examinee’s

⁎ Positive discrimination: an item is correctly answered by superiors and is

not answered correctly by inferiors. The discriminative power range from
+1 to -1

⁎ Negative discrimination: an item is correctly answered by inferiors and is

not answered correctly by superiors.

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Relationship between difficulty value and discrimination power

►Both (D.V & D.I) are complementary not contradictory to each other

►Both should considered in selecting good items

►If an item has negatively discriminate or zero discrimination, is to be

rejected whatever the difficulty value

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 Item Banking

An item bank could be a database, a word document, an excel

document, anything that ties together content with related data.

Is a means to producing better questions (or items) and

question papers (or tests) through the use of up to date statistical
information about how tests and items perform when sat by
candidates.

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 Cont…

Improve the efficiency of the production of examination materials

Provide for the controlled re-use of questions (or items) and,

Can be used to support new models of assessment that begin to move

away from offering one or two examinations per year on fixed dates

Sophisticated electronic technologies are needed to store large

numbers of items, information about each item and to apply
statistical procedures to analyses the results of tests

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 con’t.
Item storage From original draft through ultimate "retirement," an item should be maintained in the

computerized bank.

A computerized item bank should provide a means of storing, retrieving, and maintaining test items

and related descriptive information.

Item identifier-Each item must be assigned a unique identifier (ID) which may be a number, a

character, or a combination of the two.

Whenever changes are made to an item, a new item ID should be assigned.

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 con’t…

Item type- Items types include multiple-choice questions (MCQ),

short answer, matching, essay, etc.

There are three primary functions of item bank management.

These are

 populating the item bank

 monitoring the performance of items and tests

 maintaining item and test security.

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 Advantages of item banking

Increased reliability. Good items can be reused, bad items can be retired.

Increased consistency.

To allow reporting on program status

Increased speed of creating tests

Customised workflow for your items.

Ability to build an audit trail for your items

Increased security of items.

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 Features of item banking
o Item authoring

o Remote item authoring

o Support of multiple item types

o Item banking

o Search capabilities

o Import/export capabilities

o Batch editing capabilities

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 Cont…
o Test construction

o Test assembly

o Export features

o Ancillary features

o Security and access

o Workflow management

o Project tracking
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 limitations of item banking
• Item banking and item response theory are not cure-alls for
measurement Problems.

• Persistence and good judgment must remain vital aspects in any test
construction and test usage effort.

• An item bank really consists of multiple collections of items with

fairly uni-dimensional content area, such as mathematic computations
or vocabulary

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 References
1. Educational Research Educational and Mental Measurement - R. A. Sharma.
2. Research Methodology – R. P. Bhatnagar Research Methodology – Lokesh Kaul
3. Item Banking, Test Development, and Test Delivery David J. Weiss University
of Minnesota In Press, 2011
4. Item Banking Betty A. Bergstrom Computer Adaptive Technologies, Inc.
5. Sharma R.A (2007);Essential of Scientific Behavioural Research, Meerut, Lall
book depot.
6. Mehta D.D (2011);Educational Measurement and Evaluation, Meerut, Tandon
publication.
7. Kulbir Singh Sidhu (2005);New Approaches to Measurement and Evaluation, New
Delhi, Sterling Publishers.
8. Akbar Husain (2012);Psychological Testing, New Delhi, Pearson
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THANK YOU!!

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