A Novel Method for Evaluating Item Quality in Medical and Professional School Exams

• In Event: 14.046 - Poster Session 1
  In Poster Session: 14.046-9 - Division I Poster Session

Abstract

It has been well documented in the research literature that poor quality examination items may result in invalid test scores that potentially misrepresent what a student actually knows about a given content area (Downing & Haladyna, 1997). This is primarily because poor items often offer psychological and/or technical cues within the wording of an item or its response options that may unduly benefit a test-taker or otherwise improves one’s chance of answering the item correctly. The purpose of this study was to introduce a simple, but novel, method for evaluating item quality and discerning the effects of baseline guessing contamination.

Authors

• Kenneth Royal, North Carolina State University

• Mari-Wells Hedgpeth, North Carolina State University

• Ryan Madanick, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill