Task 3: Item analysis and interpretation

The designed test had been administered in year 3 Al-Farabi classroom during my
second practicum. There are twenty-five pupils in the classroom comprises of ten boys and
fifteen girls had answered the test paper. The pupils levels of proficiency are advanced.
Table one (refer to appendix A) shows the marks achieved by the pupils based on the
designed test. The highest mark obtained by the pupils is twenty and the lowest mark is
eight.
Based on the table one above, it is clear the mode for the test is seventeen. Table
one clearly portrayed that the most frequent score obtained by pupils is 17 where there are
four pupils scored this mark for the designed test. There are twenty five scores in the table
one. Therefore, in order to get the median, the scores are being arranged in ascending
order. As such, the score in the middle is 16. Table one shows the process on how the
median is obtained. Meanwhile, the mean for this set of scores are 15.24. The use of mean
is to portray the average score of pupils based on the test item administered. Based on the
scores that had been shown, fourteen pupils scored higher than the mean and eleven pupils
scored lower that the mean. It acts as the benchmark for teachers to measure pupils
abilities to answer the designed test item. Besides, teachers also can identify the lower and
higher level of proficiencies pupils from the mean of set scores. Diagram one below showed
the mean of the test scores.
Mean =
8+9+10+11+11+13+14+14+14+15+15+16+16+16+17+17+17+17+18+18+
18+19+19+19+20
25
15.24

Diagram 1
Standard deviation refers to how much the scores deviate from the mean. The smaller the
value of standard deviation, the smaller the spread of the distribution and it implies the data
are closer to each other (homogeneous). The bigger the standard deviation, the more
heterogeneous the data is. Based on the table three (refer to appendix C) the standard
deviation is 3.2. It shows that the standard deviation is smaller. So it means that the scores
of the pupils are close to each other.
AMALINA BINTI ROSLAN
PISMP JANUARY 2013|

As there are twenty five pupils in the classroom, 27.5% of this total is 6.875. The top
group and bottom group will consist of seven pupils each. The top group pupils are students
A to G which belong to weak pupils and the bottom group pupils are students S to Y which
are belong excellent pupils (refer to table four in appendix D). Based on the table one, the
highest number of wrong answers can be seen at question number ten where twelve pupils
answer it wrongly. For this question, there are five pupils in the bottom group (T,U,V,W and
Y) were able to answer it correctly and two pupils (D and E) in the top group answered it
correctly. Discrimination index in table four stated that the index for question ten is 0.43. It
shows a positive discrimination where the better pupils are performing much better than the
weaker ones. The discrimination index also known as item discrimination is a measure of
how the candidates perform on this question as opposed to another measure of
performance (McAlpine, 2002).
As been stated earlier in table four, the difficulty index for question twelve is 0.52
which indicates that it belongs to moderate level of question. Half of the pupils able to
choose the correct answer and a few of them did not manage to do so. In the designed test,
there are seven too easy questions, nine easy questions and four moderate questions.
There are nine pupils who able to answer questions number one till five and number six to
ten correctly, seven pupils managed to answer questions number eleven to fifteen correctly
and eleven pupils gets all correct answers for question number sixteen to twenty. On the
other hand, as we can see in the table one, there are three pupils who score from six to ten
marks, eight pupils score from eleven to fifteen marks and fourteen pupils score from sixteen
to twenty marks. The overall marks obtained by the pupils are between sixteen to twenty
marks which indicate about 56% of the pupils in the classroom. The marks show that the
designed test is reliable. Thus, it clearly shows most of the pupils in the classroom were able
to answer the designed test confidently. Based on the pupils score, I can conclude that the
level of difficulty for the designed test item is low. Difficulty item refers to percentage of
students who answered correctly and ranges from 0 to 100. Higher numbers indicate higher
difficulty (Test Item Analysis, n.d.). Table five (refer to appendix E) proved that the designed
test is quite easy for the pupils.
Although the difficulty index for question number ten is moderate, twelve pupils were
unable to answer the question correctly. The correct answer for this question is D. However,
seven out of twelve pupils chose C as the answer. It proves that the question provides good
distractors to confuse pupils from choosing the right answer. Chitravelu, Sithamparam and
Teh (2005) proved that statement by saying that distractors must not be merely incorrect,
but must pose different problems in relation to the main feature being tested. The picture
AMALINA BINTI ROSLAN
PISMP JANUARY 2013|

provided might confuse pupils to answer the question correctly. Besides, the word volleyball
in C might make pupils to relate the word with the picture. The purpose of the distractors is
to distract pupils who have partial understanding of the test. Woolfolk (2013) said that if
there were no good distractors, students with only a vague understanding would have no
difficulty in finding the right answer.
The most obvious weakness of the designed test is the questions designed are not
challenging and cater pupils higher order thinking skills (HOTS). As we can see in table five
(refer to appendix E), there are no difficult and too difficult level of questions had been
constructed in the designed test. There are too many easy questions had been designed,
thus it decreased the content validity of the designed test. Joan and JoAnn (2014) said that
teacher needs to be sure the test is at the appropriate level for the children and not being
asked to use language or content that they havent encountered. The discrimination index
(D) clearly explained that there are a few questions which are questions two, three, eleven,
fifteen and sixteen (refer to table four) that were unsuitable to be tested. The content of test
is too low for the pupils. The other weakness that can be observed in the designed test is the
sources that being used to design the test is not varied. There are only pictures and a
reading text being used in the test.
Since the designed test is aim to evaluate pupils reading skills, teacher should look
for authentic reading materials from the magazines, newspaper and many more. By using
those materials, it could create challenges for pupils to read, understand the text and answer
the questions. Besides, there are also graphics that can attract and motivate pupils to read.
Furthermore, the language that being used in those materials is complex and portrayed
ambiguous meaning. In designing reading assessment, text selection is important. It should
motivate the children to read, be written at the childrens reading level and be relevant (Joan
and JoAnn, 2014). In conclusion, the designed test needs to be improved in some aspects
so that it can be used in the future classroom.

AMALINA BINTI ROSLAN

PISMP JANUARY 2013|

References
Chitravelu, N., Sithamparam, S. and Teh, S.C. (2005). ELT methodology principles and
practice. Selangor: Oxford Fajar Sdn. Bhd.
Joan, K. S., & JoAnnn , C. (2014). Teaching young learners english. Geographic Learning.
Malamed, C. (n.d.). 10 rules for writing multiple choice questions. Retrieved on 27th July,
2015, from http://theelearningcoach.com/elearning_design/rules-for-multiple-choice
questions/.
McAlpine, M. (2002). A summary of methods of item analysis. Scotland: Robert Clark Centre
for Technological Education, University of Glasgow.
Mode, median and mean (n.d.). Retrieved on 27th July, 2015, from
https://us.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/35399_Module5.pdf.
Santrock, J.W, (2011). Educational Psychology. New York: McGraw Hill.
Test item analysis (n.d.). Retrieved on 27th July, 2015, from
https://www.turningtechnologies.com/pdf/CorpGov/BestPractice-ItemAnalysis.pdf.
Woolfolk, A. (2013). Educational psychology. United States of America: Pearson Education,
Inc.

AMALINA BINTI ROSLAN

PISMP JANUARY 2013|