NR 537 Week 4 Scholarly Discussion Item Analysis

NR 537 Week 4 Scholarly Discussion Item Analysis

Student Name

Chamberlain University

NR-537: Assessment & Evaluation in Education

Prof. Name:

Date

NR 537 Week 4 Scholarly Discussion Item Analysis

An item analysis should be conducted before taking any action to address potential issues that may arise from the test. The goal of an item analysis is to assess the quality of the test using both quantitative and qualitative data (Kaur et al., 2016). The qualitative data would include the learners’ and staff nurses’ thoughts, feelings, and perceptions regarding the test items. This data could be gathered through interviews with the learners and staff nurses to identify problematic areas in the competency test (Quaigrain & Arhin, 2017). Understanding the learners’ perspective will help educators decide whether to review, remove, or retain test items that have been flagged as problematic.

In addition to qualitative feedback, quantitative data would also be necessary to evaluate the quality of each test item. This data would include the test scores of each learner for every item on the competency test. By analyzing the score distributions for each test item, educators can identify areas where learners are struggling, often referred to as item difficulty (Quaigrain & Arhin, 2017). For example, the difficulty of a question with a single correct answer can be determined by calculating the percentage of learners who answered it correctly.

NR 537 Week 4 Scholarly Discussion Item Analysis

Item difficulty is measured on a scale of 0 to 100, with higher values indicating less difficulty. A wide variation in performance, such as a 100% pass rate for one item and a 0% pass rate for another, would suggest a discrepancy in difficulty levels between test items. Additionally, if only a subset of learners performs well on a particular item, this would also raise concerns about the fairness and clarity of the test question.

It is essential to determine whether the issue lies within the test itself or the learners’ understanding of the material. Some learners might not have fully grasped the concept being tested, leading to poor performance on certain items. Here, qualitative data from learners is invaluable, as it can shed light on whether the learners struggled because of the test’s complexity or if they simply did not study or understand the content. This feedback would help educators make informed decisions about how to adjust the test moving forward.

Table: Item Analysis Process

References

Kaur, M., Singla, S., & Mahajan, R. (2016). Item analysis of in-use multiple choice questions in pharmacology. International Journal of Applied and Basic Medical Research, 6(3), 170. https://doi.org/10.4103/2229-516X.186965

Quaigrain, K., & Arhin, A. K. (2017). Using reliability and item analysis to evaluate a teacher-developed test in educational measurement and evaluation. Cogent Education, 4(1), 1301013. https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186X.2017.1301013