Besides having a good criteria, the other characteristics of the test that’s more important and specific is the quality of the test items. To know the quality of
the test items, teachers should use a method called item analysis.
F. Item Analysis
According to Anthony J. Nitko stated that: “Item analysis refers to the process of collecting, summarizing, and using information about individual test
items especially information about pupils’ response to items”
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An item analysis is needed to confirm that the items on the test are functioning in the desired manner. It is not uncommon for an item to appear
satisfactory to the instructor, yet be found by the item analysis to be intrinsically ambiguous and to elicit an undesired response pattern from students. The chief
purposes of an item analysis, therefore, are to determine the difficulty and discrimination of each item.
When a test is subjected to item analysis, important insights into the students’ thinking and understanding of the content being assessed are found. The
empirical feedback from item analysis almost certainly will improve an instructor’s skills in the test construction to a degree that is not otherwise possible.
An item analysis can reveal unsuspected defects of specific items, and the class’s performance on the individual items is useful formative evaluation
feedback to the instructor. The feedback on individual items can help the instructor to identify points or concepts that are in need of review and further
instruction. The response of one student to a constructed-response item can help identify misunderstanding, and the aggregated responses of a group of students
can be useful in the subsequent design. The item analysis can identify items that need to be eliminated because of
intrinsic ambiguity. An item analysis also produces an estimate of the measurement precision of the test—reliability and standard error of measurement.
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Anthony J. Nitko, Educational Test and Measurement an Introduction, New York: Harbour Brace Jovanich Inch., 1983, p.284
For the teacher made test, the following are important uses of item analysis: determining whether an item functions as teacher intended, feedback to
students about their performance and as a basis for class discussion, feedback about pupil difficulties, area for curriculum improvement, revising the items and
improving item writing skill. Item analysis usually provides two kinds of information on items.
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1. Item facility, which helps us decide if the test items are at he right level
for the target group, and 2.
Item discrimination, which allows us to see if the individual items are providing information on candidates’ abilities consistent with that
provided by the other items on the test. Analysis of items discriminating addresses a different target: consistency
of performance by candidates across items. The usual method for calculating item discriminating involves comparing performance on each item by different groups
of test takers; those who have relatively poorly. For example, as items get harder, we would expect those who do best on the vest overall to be ones who in the main
get they right. Poor item discriminating indices are signal that an item deserves revision.
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H.G Widdowson, Language Testing, Oxford: University Press, 2000, p. 60
CHAPTER III PROFIL OF MTS. PEMBANGUNAN UIN JAKARTA
