Psychometric changes on item difficulty due to item review by examinees

Authors

Elena C. Papanastasiou

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7275/jcyv-k456

Abstract

If good measurement depends in part on the estimation of accurate item characteristics, it is essential that test developers become aware of discrepancies that may exist on the item parameters before and after item review. The purpose of this study was to examine the answer changing patterns of students while taking paper-and-pencil multiple choice exams, and to examine how these changes affect the estimation of item difficulty parameters. The results of this study have shown that item review by examinees does produce some changes to the examinee ability estimates and to the item difficulty parameters. In addition, these effects are more pronounced in shorter tests than in longer tests. In turn, these small changes produce larger effects when estimating the changes in the information values of each student’s test score. Accessed 4,021 times on https://pareonline.net from January 07, 2015 to December 31, 2019. For downloads from January 1, 2020 forward, please click on the PlumX Metrics link to the right.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Papanastasiou, Elena C. (2019) "Psychometric changes on item difficulty due to item review by examinees," Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation: Vol. 20, Article 3.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7275/jcyv-k456
Available at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/pare/vol20/iss1/3