Department of Education

National Educators Academy of the Philippines

SESSION GUIDE

Session No. & Title: Session #9: Item Analysis (Difficulty and Discrimination Index) and Item Banking

Target Participants: School Heads

Link to the Previous

Applying Technical Standards on Test Construction
Session/Topic:

Link to the Next

Designing Rubrics for Authentic Assessment
Session/Topic:

Contribution of the
This session will provide school heads with different responses to the examination questions with the intention of
Session to the
evaluating its quality and validity, and setting roles, permissions, and limiting access on a “need to know” basis.
Program Outcomes:

At the end of the session, the participants will be able to:

Learning Objectives:  Identify specific areas of the course content which need greater emphasis and clarity in testing materials;
 Determine ways of improving the measurement of a test; and
 Develop valid, contextualized, and meaningful testing materials.

Assessment does not happen over time to know what went right and what went wrong. Thus, item analyses and test
Key Understanding:
banking are formulated to improve the validity of a test by improving its reliability.

References:

Buendicho, F. (2004). Assessment of Student Learning 1. Rex Book Store, Manila.

Conception, Benjamin, et al. (20216). LET Reviewer. MET Review Center, Manila.
 DepEd Order No. 29, s. 2017

https://www.slideshare.net/ricanice16/item-analysis-and-validation-53094605

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuQQmlWNdKc

https://www.google.com/search?
q=item+analysis+and+validation+in+education+deped&bih=568&biw=1366&hl=en&tbm=vid&ei=-vHlY5qFI8Hp-
Qbqh6fYCQ&ved=0ahUKEwia6rb8tor9AhXBdN4KHerDCZsQ4dUDCA0&uact=5&oq=item+analysis+and+validation+in
+education+deped&gs_lcp=Cg1nd3Mtd2l6LXZpZGVvEAMyBQghEKABMgUIIRCgAToICCEQFhAeEB06CwghEBYQHhD
xBBAdOgcIIRCgARAKOgQIIRAVUIAJWMoWYL8XaABwAHgAgAFziAHKBZIBAzMuNJgBAKABAcABAQ&sclient=gws-wiz-
video&safe=active&ssui=on#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:c08457b8,vid:rNz0zPCgYyU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HS-sJTwIGso

Stage & Methodology Key Points Tools/Materials/Resources Slide Time Allotment

Introduction
Setting the
Simple presentation on environment of Laptop/ Slide Deck Slide 4 3 minutes
assessments with item learning
analysis through video clip.

Group Activity/ Visioning: Activating the prior Slide 5 10 minutes

knowledge of the
participants Activity sheets per
individual and group
DO: Introduce the activity to about “Let’s Try It”
the participants by giving
sample data (Test Questions
in Major Learning Areas) for
them to analyze.

Note: Let them bring their

consolidated reports on school
Assessment Test

ASK: What are your ideas on

the video presented a while
ago?

DO: Form 4 groups (based

on their Key Stages) and do
the following:

 Distribute the papers

with data that need to
assess (4 Major
Learning Areas-Math,
Science, English and
Filipino); and
 Discuss within the
group the result of
their assessments.

SAY: Participants will

present their outputs after
group activity (2 minutes per
group).

Analysis: Examining the laptop, pen and papers, Slide 6 2 minutes

ASK:

participants on the
meta cards
•Is there any item in your task given to them.
sample tests from different
learning areas that need to
be revised, retained or
discarded? Why?

Abstraction:

Present the power point to

introduce the key
understandings, skills and
attitudes developed.

Laptop, Slide Deck Slide 7 1 minute

SAY:

Item Analysis is a statistical Item Analysis

technique which is used for (Difficulty and
selecting and rejecting the Discrimination Index)
items of the test on the basis and Item Banking
of their difficulty valued and
discriminated power.

Lecture & Discussion Laptop, pen and papers,

ppt
SAY:

Preliminary Steps in doing The undesirable

Item Analysis: characteristics of an
item either be revised
1. Rank the scores of the or rejected using the
learners from highest different steps in doing
score to the lowest item analysis. Slides 8-17 17:30 minutes
score.

2. Select and identify the

top 27% performing
group and the bottom
27% performing group
from the total takers.

3. Set aside the

remaining 46%
because they will not
be used for item
analysis.

4. Tabulate the number

of the learners in the
upper and lower
groups based on their
selected choice per
item.

3 Criteria in Determining
the Desirability of an Item:
A. Difficulty Index (Di)

• Pertains to the
proportion of the
number of the
learners in the upper
and lower groups who
answered an item
correctly.
A desired index of
• The lower the difficulty must not be
difficulty index, the lower than 0.80.
higher is its level of
difficulty.

Example:

Solve for the index difficulty

of an item, if among the 75
test takers, only 45 learners
got the right (r) response.

Di = r ÷ N

= 45 ÷ 75

= 0.60
B. Discrimination Index
(Ds)

Where:
SAY:
r = total # of learners
It is the difference of the who got the correct
proportion on the “correct response
response” between the
learners in the upper group N = total # of takers
(UG) and the proportion of
the learners in the lower
group (LG).

Ds = Pu + Pl

Where:

Pu = proportion of the
# of learners in the
upper group who got
the correct response

Pl = proportion of the #
of learners in the lower
SAY: group who the correct
Let’s try to examine this response
table. It shows that the
correct option is Letter C
because the proportion item N = total number of
on the upper group is higher takers
than the proportion of the
lower group which indicate
Positive Discrimination.
Thus, the item is good.

On the contrary, if the

proportion of the upper
group is less than the lower
group it indicates Negative
Discrimination that connotes
the it has poor item validity
and needs to reject the item.
However, if the same number
of proportions from UG and
LG it means the item is Zero
Discrimination for it is rather
too easy or ambiguous.
SAY:

It shows that the result of

the test particularly in Item #
15 which has a 0.20 Ds
leads to Non-discriminating,
Fair item & need revision.

For the Index of difficulty

let’s recall the given formula
where in r = total number of
correct responses (UG and
LG) divided to the N = total
number of takers. See table
for the range and
interpretation. Item No. 15
falls under Easy.

SAY:

Item No. 15 based on Index

of Difficulty (Di) which is
Easy and Discrimination
Index (Ds) resulted to non-
discriminating, therefore the
item is poor and must be
rejected. The decision is to
reject the item with the
justification that it is
unreasonable to retain an
EASY item that cannot
differentiate high from low
performance learners.

The last steps in IA is the

Effectiveness of Alternatives
or Distractor Analysis.
This step, focus on the
following:

 Determination
whether distracters
(incorrect but
plausible options)
were effective/
ineffective in a
particular item.

 A distractor which no
one chooses means is
“obviously” an
incorrect answer.

 A good item must have

distractors that attract
more people from the
LG than those at the
UG. Otherwise, it is
considered an
“ambiguous” item.

SAY:

We now learned how to come

up with Item Analysis. Let us
move on to the Item
Banking.
Why Item Banking? Why is it
important? To understand it
better let us all watch a video
presentation (18:30) by
Assessments System.
Item Banking refers to
the process of
developing, reviewing,
and managing large
sets of test questions
over time.
 Slide 18 18:30 minutes

Synthesis & Application

SAY: With your group,

applied what you have
learned in Item Analysis by
getting the Difficulty Index
(Di) and Discrimination
Index (Ds) in the test made Measuring the
on the four major Learning knowledge gain from laptop, pen and papers Slide 23 5 minutes
Areas (English, Math, the session.
Science and Filipino) which
you have a while back. Then,
choose which of those items
need to be in the Item
Banking.

Closure: Giving their ways laptop, pen and papers, Slides 24 3 minutes
 SAY:

1. What are your insights

about the topic discussed?

forward and insights. meta cards or idea cards

2. What are your ways
forward on crafting item
analysis and test banking?

3. What are your roles on

formulating item analysis
and test banking?

Session Guide Writer:

DAMASO I. EDUCALAN
School Principal III

Content Editor: Language Editor: Chief Language Editor:

MARIE FLO M. AYUSIP DAMASO I. EDUCALAN ARNEL PABLO L. AGUSTIN

Principal II School Principal III Principal I

Chief Trainer:

RODEL D. LINTAG
 Education Program Supervisor

Project Management Team:

ARNEL A. USMAN PhD RIGETTE RYAN S. RAMOS EdD

Chair Co-Chair
Education Program Supervisor Education Program Supervisor