Module Components

• Overview
• Assignments

Topics

• Planning a Test
• General Rules for Item Writing
• Selected Response Items
• Constructed Response Items
• Context-Dependent Items

Nurs 791 - Instructional Strategies and Assessment

Module 10: Test Planning to Item Development

Planning a Test

How does test development begin?

Tests are developed by teachers, faculty, researchers, as well as entrepreneurs (e.g. Educational Testing Services) for a wide variety of purposes. As a new teacher, you may not be developing whole tests, but will likely have the opportunity to participate in some aspects of test development, administration, scoring, and interpretation, irrespective of the learner group with which you will be working.

There are at least three major questions need to be answered to begin test development:

1. What is the purpose of the test?
2. Who exactly are the intended respondents who will take the test?
3. What are the objectives for the test?
4. As you learned in Module 9, objectives must be measurable. This means that the critical learner behavior in objectives comes from a framework or taxonomy (such as Bloom’s), and that these verbs must be precise. The verbs represent behaviors in cognitive, affective, or psychomotor domains.

Key Point: Clearly written objectives are essential for they guide you in choosing :

1. the appropriate teaching/instructional strategy; and
2. the type of assessment/item that will measure the objective.

Once the above three questions are answered, the next step is to develop a map or blueprint for the test which is really a map of content and objectives into cells. As seen in the sample blueprint in your text, the numbers in the cells are the number of items – in this case, a total of 75 items are needed. Blueprints are often described to the learner in more of a summary fashion. Please go to  Page 5 of the National League for Nursing’s Handbook for the Nurse Educator Certification Examination and review the test blueprint that follows.

How do you decide how many items are on a test? There are many factors that enter into this decision, but primary ones are how many items are needed to:

1. adequately sample the content/behavioral domains of the test?
2. contribute to the reliability estimate of the test that is developed (longer tests help increase estimates of reliability)?
3. assist in estimating validity of the test?
4. allow for a feasible response time?

Selecting the Item Format

As you will see in your reading, there are many factors that impact the choice of item format. Among these are the type and level of the objective being measured.

Once the blueprint is completed, you are ready to select the type of item(s) that will go on the test – objective or subjective?

Objective Items are structured and require the learner to respond in some manner to provide one clear, correct answer that is pre-determined by the test developer(s). Please read about the following types of items in your text and the descriptions about how to write them: True/False (Alternate Choice) and variations on this item format (e.g. cluster, correction), Matching, Multiple Choice, and Multiple Response. These types of items are sometimes referred to a “choice” items as the respondents typically chooses the correct response from those that are presented to them.

Subjective Items are structured for learners to respond to the item by providing either a restricted response (e.g. one-word) or extended response (essay) item. These types of items are sometimes referred to as “supply” items as respondents must provide the responses requested.