Ebel Method

The Ebel method is a standard setting method normally used to determine a cut score for multiple-choice question types of tests. The Ebel method has been used for setting standards for examinations within the fields of higher education and medical and health professions and for applicant selection decision-making.

The Ebel method involves a panel of experts who classify each item by two criteria: (1) level of difficulty (e.g., easy, medium, hard) and (2) relevance or importance (e.g., essential, important, desirable, unsure). Then, the panel reaches a consensus regarding the expected percentage of items that should be answered correctly for each group of items, classified by both difficulty and relevance/importance. To determine the cut score for the test, the total number of items in each group is multiplied by the required percentage of correct answers; then the sum of all the groups is divided by the number of items multiplied by the number of panelists. The hypothetical example shown in Table 1 demonstrates how that works.

In Table 1, a panel of five experts applies the Ebel method to an examination consisting of 125 items.

• 1.
  Expert 1 classifies each item to one of the 12 groups; the number of items classified to each group for Expert 1 is shown in column C;
• 2.
  Expert 2 does the same for column D and so forth with all other experts. The sum of items in each group across all experts is placed in column H.
• 3.
  The agreed percentage correct required per group is placed in column I. Column J is the product of multiplication of H × I.
• 4.
  The total number of items classified is the sum of column H (H15).
• 5.
  The total sum of product J is J15.
• 6.
  The calculated cut score is J15/H15, that is, 38,430/625 = 61.49.