Constructing Test Items

1 What Is Constructing Test Items?.- What This Book Is About.- Four Major Issues in Item Construction.- Type of Items Addressed.- Types of Items Not Covered.- Criteria for Material Included.- Major Purposes Of This Book.- Goal for This Book.- Standardizing Editorial Guidelines for Writing Items.- Other Purposes.- Why This Information Is Important.- Persons For Whom This Book Is Intended.- Two Groups of Item Writers.- Other Groups Who May Use This Information.- Overview Of The Remaining Chapters.- How To Approach the Chapters.- 2 Definition, Purpose, And Characteristics of Items.- Defining A Test Item.- The Definition of an Item.- Understanding the Definition.- Test Item Nomenclature.- No Current Uniform Terminology.- The Term Test Item.- The Examinee.- Specifying Item Formats.- Writing Samples, Exercises, and Essay-Type Questions.- Types of Item Formats.- Terms for Parts of the Test Item.- Terms Used in Scoring Test Items.- Putting Together the Parts of an Item.- Purpose For Test Items.- Psychological Theory as Background to Items.- Items as Measures of Constructs.- Constructs Exist for All Persons.- Criteria For Good Test Items.- Difficulty of Establishing Criteria.- Accepted Criteria for Good Items.- Assumptions For Test Items.- Assumptions as Theoretical Background to Constructing Items.- The Assumption of Unidimensionality for Items.- The Assumption of Local Independence for Items.- The Assumption of Items Characteristic Curves.- The Importance of the Assumptions.- Classification Of Items.- Understanding How Examinees Respond To Items.- Conclusion.- 3 Determining the Content For Items: Validity.- Basic Concepts of Validity.- Understanding Validity.- A Complete Definition of Validity.- Construct-Related Evidence for Validity.- The Relationship Between Constructing Test Items and Validity.- Abetting Validity in the Item Construction Process.- Documenting the Item-Construction Steps.- Conditions For Items To Contribute To Validity.- Defining a Tests Purpose.- Devising Specifications for Tests and Items.- Content-Related Evidence for Validity.- Initial Considerations When Selecting Content For Items.- The Relationship Between Tests and Curriculum.- Modern Goal Conception.- Achieving Clarity In A Tests Content.- Importance of Specificity in Content.- Examples of Clearly Defined Content.- Developing Test Content Specifications.- Planning for Test Content Specifications.- Researchers Work in Promoting Clarity of Content.- Establishing a Table of Test Content Specifications.- Alternative Ways to Present Test Content Specifications.- The Test Developers Responsibility for Preparing Test Content Specifications.- Melding Cognitive Processing Levels With Items Content.- Identifying Levels of Cognitive Processing.- Difficulty of Using Blooms Taxonomy to Write Items.- The Framework for Instructional Objectives Taxonomy.- Test Item Specifications.- The Role of Test Item Specifications.- Caution Against Making Test Item Specifications Too Prescriptive.- Making An Item Consistent With Its Specification.- The Importance of Item-Objective Congruence.- Practice in Determining Congruence.- Conclusion.- 4 Starting To Write Items: Practical Considerations.- The Importance Of Good Writing In Test Items.- Sources For Information On Writing Style.- Computer Dictionaries and Thesauruses.- Using Taxonomies In Writing Items.- Writing Items at the Higher Taxonomic Levels.- Independence of Subject Matter from Cognitive Processing Level.- Suggestions for Writing Items with Other Cognitive Processing Taxonomies.- Distinctness Between Stem and Response Alternatives.- Importance Of An Interrogative Stem.- Determining The Correct Response For Test Items.- Absolutely-Correct Type Test Items.- Best-Answer Items.- Determining Which Response Is Best.- A Technique for Judging Items.- Difficulty in Writing Best-Answer Items.- Determining The Optimal Number Of Response Alternatives.- Making Response Alternatives Plausible.- Number of Distractors and Highly