Test Item Analysis: A Catalyst for Quality Assurance of Assessment in Outcome-Based Education

Abstract

Due to the evolving demands of the educational system, where a greater focus is placed on learning outcomes for students rather than merely degrees, outcome-based education (OBE) has grown in favor. An OBE system involves a clear picture of what is important for students to be able to do, organizing the curriculum, instruction and assessment to make sure this learning ultimately happens. Assessment and evolution is one of the important steps in Outcome based education. Purpose of the assessment and evolution is to final the lacuna and loopholes of teaching learning process and intended outcome that are finalized for particular course. Test item analysis is one of the prime components of assessment, which is the process of statistically analyzing student responses to individual exam questions. Facilitation value, discriminative index, and effectiveness of the distraction are the components of test item analysis. Item analysis helps in analyzing the difficulty level of items; whether the items are challenging, easy, comparatively difficult, or relatively easy, to discriminate amongst pupils who have different performance levels and identifies the effectiveness of the distractions in the multiple choice items.