Factors Affecting Item Difficulty in English Listening Comprehension Tests

Sung, Pei-Ju; Lin, Su-Wei; Hung, Pi‐Hsia

doi:10.13189/ujer.2015.030704

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…There is possible explanation for these results. Item difficulty can be influenced by cognitive factors (Sung et al, 2015). Cognitive factors involve comprehension, coding, transition, scrutinizing, and working memory (Danili & Reid, 2006).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Item Analysis of English Final Semester Test

Maharani

Putro

2020

IJEFL

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Numerous studies have been conducted on the item test analysis in English test. However, investigation on the characteristics of a good test of English final semester test is still rare in several districts in East Java. This research sought to examine the quality of the English final semester test in the academic year of 2018/2019 in Ponorogo. A total of 151 samples in the form of students’ answers to the test were analysed based on item difficulty, item discrimination, and distractors’ effectiveness using Quest program. This descriptive quantitative research revealed that the test does not have good proportion among easy, medium, and difficult item. In the item discrimination, the test had 39 excellent items (97.5%) which meant that the test could discriminate among high and low achievers. Besides, the distractors could distract students since there were 32 items (80%) that had effective distractors. The findings of this research provided insights that item analysis became important process in constructing test. It related to find the quality of the test that directly affects the accuracy of students’ score.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Item Analysis of English Final Semester Test

Maharani

Putro

2020

IJEFL

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“…Thirdly, teachers training on the item development of which is necessary in enhancing well formulated questions. In support of these factors, Sung, Lin and Hung (2015) pointed out that, phonetic discrimination, number of plausible distracters, heterogeneity of sentence patterns in options, necessity for inference, lexical overlap, content familiarity, redundancy of necessary information have influence on difficulty and discrimination level of the test items.…”

Section: Difficulty and Discrimination Indices Of The Test Itemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Massification in Universities: Are Assessment Tools Still Reliable? A Reflection from Sokoine University of Agriculture, Tanzania

2021

JEP

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A tremendous increase of the number of students in universities has been experienced by almost every country all over the world including Tanzania. The Increasing number of students has greatly affected the instructors' workload and general practices of student's assessment and evaluation. This study aimed at determining the reliability of the assessment tools at Sokoine University of Agriculture. Retrospective record review was done on education undergraduate students who sat for an EDP 100 in 2014/2015, 2015/2016 and 2017/2018 academic years where the course was selected through random procedures. A total of 214 scripts were systematically randomly sampled from each cohort. The results revealed a drop in internal consistency of the scores obtained from EDP 100 course across the three cohorts. Majority of the questions for the EDP 100 though were moderately difficulty, their discrimination powers were poor. However, the variation in difficulty and discrimination indices for the three cohorts was statistically not significant (p˃0.05 for MCQ and MIQ) except the discrimination index for MIQ which shows significant variations (p˂0.05). It is therefore recommended that similar studies should be done to determine both validity and reliability of the assessment tools for the other subjects at the University.

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The difference between estimated and perceived item difficulty: An empirical study

Sayın,

Bulut

2024

International Journal of Assessment Tools in Education

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Test development is a complicated process that demands examining various factors, one of them being writing items of varying difficulty. It is important to use items of a different range of difficulty to ensure that the test results accurately indicate the test-taker's abilities. Therefore, the factors affecting item difficulty should be defined, and item difficulties should be estimated before testing. This study aims to investigate the factors that affect estimated and perceived item difficulty in the High School Entrance Examination in Türkiye and to improve estimation accuracy by giving feedback to the experts. The study started with estimating item difficulty for 40 items belonging to reading comprehension, grammar, and reasoning based on data. Then, the experts' predictions were compared with the estimated item difficulty and feedback was provided to improve the accuracy of their predictions. The study found that some item features (e.g., length and readability) did not affect the estimated difficulty but affected the experts' item difficulty perceptions. Based on these results, the study concludes that providing feedback to experts can improve the factors affecting their item difficulty estimates. So, it can help improve the quality of future tests and provide feedback to experts to improve their ability to estimate item difficulty accurately.

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Factors Affecting Item Difficulty in English Listening Comprehension Tests

Cited by 5 publications

References 14 publications

Item Analysis of English Final Semester Test

Item Analysis of English Final Semester Test

Massification in Universities: Are Assessment Tools Still Reliable? A Reflection from Sokoine University of Agriculture, Tanzania

The difference between estimated and perceived item difficulty: An empirical study

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