Item Analysis (Evaluation

of Objective Tests)

Most useful in preparing question

bank and reviewing questions
Done through calculating the
difficulty index and
discrimination index

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Item –Analysis Con’t
Also represents for the quality control of
tests and examinations.

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Purposes of Item Analysis
1. Evaluates the response pattern of each item
within the group tested. How many % have
answered on each option.
2. Evaluate the mastery of course content.
3. 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.

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Purpose…
4. It improves the reliability of objective
tests.
5. It provides a basis for revising and
restructuring tests.
6. It provides a basis for retaining or
deleting specific items.

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Conditions for application of
Item Analysis
It applies to relative referenced tests (the
procedure leads to a choice of questions that
tend to maximize variance and ensure
discriminatory ranking.
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 is very small (a minimum of 20
students could be proposed as a “pragmatic”
criterion).

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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).
It varies from 0-100%.

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 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).

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

2 x ( H- L)
N

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Steps in Item Analysis
• Award of a score to each student
• Ranking in the order of merit - Proceed from
the highest to the lowest score.
• Identification of high and low groups -
Preferable 1/3
• Calculate the difficulty index of a question
• Calculate the discrimination index of a question
• Critically evaluate each question - could be
done manually as well using computers.

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Analysis….
Difficulty index the higher the index denotes
the easier is the question.
In principle, a question with the difficulty
index lying between 25% and 75% is
acceptable (in that range, the discrimination
index is more likely to be high).
A test with the difficulty index in the range of
50% - 60% is very likely to be reliable.

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Analysis…
In calculating the discrimination index, the higher
the index denotes the more a question will
distinguish between high and low scorers.
When a test is composed of questions with high
discrimination indexes, it ensures a ranking that
clearly discriminates between the students
according to their level of performance, i.e. it gives
no advantage to the low group over the high
group.
In other words, it helps you to find out the best
students.

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Analysis…
0.4 and over: excellent question.
0.3: Good question
0.2: marginal question-revise
Under 0.15: poor question- most likely
to be discarded.
0: No discrimination at all
Negative number is a bad item

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Exercise:
On dividing group of 21 students into 3
groups of 7 each, based on the basis of
the total score of each student, it is
found that for the first item 7 students
in the high group and 4 from the lower
group have got the right answer.
Calculate the difficulty index; the
discrimination index and give your
decision based on the analysis.
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