Kinds of Test Test

multiple-choice test items. 13 Therefore, it is necessary for the teacher to know are the items have well made. Although multiple-choice test items are commonly used in school, teacher can not use it in any circumstances. It is only appropriate to use multiple-choice of items when the objective of learning can be measured by having students choose his or her response from several alternatives. 14 There are three parts in multiple-choice test item; One or more introductory sentence called a stem, a correct alternative as a key, and several wrong alternative called distractors. 15 According to Effective Instructional Strategies by Kenneth D. Moore, multiple choice should be well constructed, so they are straightforward, clear, and concise. In order to make a straightforward, clear, and concise multiple-choice test items, D. Moore make a guidelines 16 that can be followed, as follows:  The central issues or problem should be stated clearly in the stem, and there should be no ambiguity in terminology.  A stem and the alternatives should be in one page.  Avoid to provide grammatical or contextual clues to the correct answer.  Use language that even the most unskilled readers will understand. Keep the reading requirement question to a minimum. Write brief stems and accurate choices.  Avoid using absolute terms such as always, never, none in the stem or alternatives.  Alternatives should be grammatically correct. The use of is or are can help students to guess the correct response. All alternatives should be fit the stems to avoid giving clues to items that are incorrect. 13 Dawn M. Zimaro, Writing Good Multiple-Choice Exams, Austin: University of Texas, 2004, p. 2. 14 Steven J. Burton, et.all, How to Prepare Better Multiple Choice Test Items: Guidelines for University Faculty, New York: Brigham Young University.1991, p. 9. 15 Kelly V. Kings, et.all, The Distractors Rationale Taxonomy: Enhancing Multiple- Choice Items in Reading and Mathematics, San Antonio: Pearson Inc., 2004, p. 3. 16 Kenneth D. Moore, Effective Instructional Strategies: From Theory to Practice, Washington DC: SAGE Publication Ltd., 2012, pp. 270-271.  Avoid the use of negatives such as not, except, and least and double negatives in the stem or alternatives. If negatives are used in the stem, put the as near the end of the stem as possible.  Avoid giving structural clues. This means, not to use one letter for the alternatives than the other, or make a pattern of a correct response.  Make sure to use “all of the above” and “none of the above” with care. Because, “all of the above” usually have poorer response than “none of the above”; because all the alternatives must be correct.  Avoid pulling statements directly from textbook. The objective of the test is for students understanding not memorization.  Alternatives should be plausible to less knowledgeable students. Write distractors with common errors, errors that likely, and erroneous common sense solution.

3. Kinds of Item Analysis

a. Difficulty Index

The difficulty index is the percentage or proportion of students who answered the item correctly. The Higher the percentage of the students who answer correctly, the easier the item is. 17 To obtain specific data, the writer differs students into two groups; upper and lower group. The writer here uses top 27 of high group and the 27 bottom of the lower group method. The 27 percentage is shown by Truman that it was small enough to clearly identify high and low students group, yet large enough to provide a sufficient number of score as a base for item statistic. 18 The difficulty index is found quite easy by dividing students who get the correct items with the total number of students whom taking the 17 John C. Ory and Katherine E. Ryan, Tips for Improving Testing and Grading, Los Angeles: SAGE Publication. Inc., 1993, p. 93. 18 Thomas R. Knapp, Statistics for Educational Measurement, Scranton: The Haddon Craftsmen,Inc., 1971, p. 69.