Item Discrimination

• Test item may have positive or negative discriminating power

positive discriminating power – when more students from the
upper group got the right answer than those from the lower group
negative discriminating power – when more students from the
lower group got the correct answer on an iten than those from the
upper group
zero discriminating power – when there is an equal number of
students from both the upper and lower groups who got the right
answer to a test item
Example of how you can plot your item
analysis
Item Group Answers Total No. of Diificulty H-L Discrimination
Correct Interpreta Interpretatio Decision
A B C D Answer Index tion Index n
U 20 3 14 2 1
1 21 0.525 7 0.35
L 20 10 7 3 0

U 20 0 0 18 2
2 27 0.675 9 0.45
L 20 0 3 9 8

U 20 3 8 4 4
3 10 0.25 6 0.3
L 20 10 2 4 4

U 20 3 3 4 10
4 14 0.35 6 0.3
L 20 2 4 10 4

U 20 15 2 2 1
5 16 0.40 14 0.7
L 20 1 10 4 5

Your decision can be to discard, revise or retain the item for final form. You may consult
the table for optimal difficulty levels based on the number of options used in the test.