Item Analysis in Teacher-Made Test: Key to Assurance of Quality in Nigerian Educational System

Abstract

One of the methods of assessing the quality of educational provisions is the performance of learners in schools. Test or examination is one of the major ways of evaluating the learners’ performance. Tests play a very important role in the educational system as they are used as tools in measurement and evaluation processes. Test as a tool of measurement process must then be qualitative. The quality of test itself can be determined through test item analysis. An item analysis provides three kinds of important information about the quality of test items. Item difficulty: A measure of whether an item was too easy or too hard. Item discrimination: A measure of whether an item discriminated between learners who knew the material well and learners who did not. Effectiveness of alternatives: Determination of whether distractors (incorrect but plausible answers) tend to be marked by the less able students and not by the more able students. The world is regarded as a global village. As such within the teaching profession, the continent and the entire world are equally forging common fronts to see that the teaching profession has common benchmark, so that teachers’ made test and competencies among others are
comparable across countries. This paper therefore, discussed concept of item analysis and how indices such as difficulty index, discriminating index and distractors index can be calculated. The paper finally recommended among others,
that teachers should not only strive to provide teaching material and to test the students’ comprehension about it, but also be able to analyse the quality of their test.