A Fortran Program for Generalized Item Analysis Using IBM 1230 Punched Output

Abstract

EDUCATIONAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL MEASUREMENT 1968, 28, 849-850. THIS program computes item and test statistics utilizing data obtained from an IBM 1230 Optical Mark Scoring Reader with an on-line IBM 534 card punch attachment. The design of this program resembles the program developed by Moore and Schutz (1967). Features of this program not included in the Moore and Schutz program are (a) the ideal mean of the test, (b) an index of item discriminating power for each item (D-values), (c) a printout for each item showing all item statistics as well as the frequency of responses for the upper group (top 27 per cent) and the lower group (bottom 27 per cent), and (d) biserial correlations.IBM 1230 answer sheets can be obtained for most standardized tests with five alternatives per question. As each answer sheet is scored by the IBM 1230 Optical Mark Scoring Reader, a corresponding IBM card can be punched by the IBM 534 card punch attachment. The IBM 534 can be programmed to produce item responses in the form of a Hollerith code which is acceptable to most data processing equipment.The following time estimates are based on normal conditions with twenty-five respondents to a seventy-three item test. Processing time for scoring and punching of item responses was ten minutes. The FORTRAN program to analyze the data ran ten seconds on the IBM 360-75 computer. The analysis of the data was completed four hours after the students had taken the examination.

Flexible Scoring and Internal Consistency Item Analysis on the IBM 360 Series

“…THE present program has three features that distinguish it from other available test scoring programs (Evans and Westbrook, 1968;Gorsuch, 1966;Moore and Schutz, 1967): (1) Omits are differentiated from wrong answers, thus permitting any desired correction for guessing and indices based upon this differentiation.…”