Item Analysis

Item analysis is the set of qualitative and quantitative techniques and procedures used to evaluate the characteristics of items of the test before and after the test development and construction. An item is a basic building block of a test, and its analysis provides information about its performance. Item analysis allows selecting or omitting items from the test, but more important, item analysis is a tool to help the item writer improve an item. Anthony Nitko suggests that some classroom uses of an item analysis might be estimating whether an item functions as intended, providing feedback to students about their performance, providing feedback to the teacher about student difficulties and ideas of curriculum improvement, revising assessment tasks, and improving item-writing skills.

Item analysis can be used ...