Item Analysis of Multiple-Choice Questions: An Assessment of Young Learners

Abstract

Although English has been taught for decades in Indonesia, the quality of multiple-choice question given to young learners was hardly examined. To touch on the issue, this study aims at determining the quality of 10 multiple-choice questions (MCQs) in a public elementary school in terms of difficulty level (P), discrimination power (D), and distractor efficiency (DE). This study employed a cross-sectional study to obtain information and evaluate MCQs in the students’ tests. It was found the multiple-choice items were efficient in which 80% of them have acceptable difficulty and 20% of them were fairly easy (P 70%). The discrimination index of 8 (80%) items was excellent and 2 of the MCQs were good. Among 40 distractors, 32 (80%) of them were functional distractors while 8 of them were non-functional distractors (NFDs). It can be concluded that most of the difficulty index was acceptable, the items discrimination power was good. In terms of distractor efficiency, two items were completely inefficient. Furthermore, MCQs that are considered poor should be revised, re-tested, and reviewed before incorporating them into the future test. This study hopefully encourages teachers to identify poorly developed MCQs and to improve their quality.

Determining the psychometric properties of a written test to assess safe dental practice

“…Items equal to or less than 0.44 were considered difficult while items equal to or more than 0.76 were considered easy and remaining between 0.45 and 0.75 were considered moderate. [38][39][40][41][42] The discrimination index was calculated in which items having less than 0.20 were considered poor discriminator while item having more than 0.39 were considered strong discriminator and remaining 0.2-0.39 were considered moderate discriminators. [38][39][40][41][42] RESULT Total 18 (42.85%) items were found to have a difficulty index of less than 0.44 and discrimination index less than 0.20 whereas 4 (0.095%) items had a difficulty index of more than 0.76 and remaining were moderate.…”

“…[38][39][40][41][42] The discrimination index was calculated in which items having less than 0.20 were considered poor discriminator while item having more than 0.39 were considered strong discriminator and remaining 0.2-0.39 were considered moderate discriminators. [38][39][40][41][42] RESULT Total 18 (42.85%) items were found to have a difficulty index of less than 0.44 and discrimination index less than 0.20 whereas 4 (0.095%) items had a difficulty index of more than 0.76 and remaining were moderate. Pearson correlation was calculated in which items having negative value or significant value less than 0.05 were considered poor.…”

“…There were a total of 18 (42.85%) items which showed poor overall reliability when deleted. Items having poor outcomes in three or more parameters were considered for deletion [38][39][40][41][42] (table 2).…”