Week Four October 29, 2012

 

Hypothetical psychology test:

Question #1 Mean score = 1.8

1.      Who came up with the psychosexual stages

*Sigmund Freud

Skinner

Gardner

Lady Gaga

Question #2 Mean score = 1.4

2.      Which psychologist tested classical conditioning with dogs

Igor Pavlov

B.F. Skinner

*Ivan Pavlov

Sigmund Freud

Question #3 Mean score = 0.2

3.      Explain the difference between operant conditioning and classical conditioning, and provide an example of each.

Question #4 Mean score = 2

4.      The act of removing a stimulus to reinforce a certain behavior.

*…is called negative reinforcement

Positive reinforcement

Punishment

All of the above

Question #5 Mean score = 0.2

5.      Psychology is _____________

*the study of the psyche

• The mean score for the entire test = 1.12
• A graph that represents the scores for each question.

Evaluation:

This psychology test contains five questions total.  The test itself is very vague.  There are no explanations or directions.  The information provided in the graph of the test does not tell the reader much information besides the total number of points that each child earned for each question.  I will conduct qualitative item analysis as well as quantitative item analysis of this psychology test and provide suggestions as well examples on how this test can be improved. 

            I began my analysis by calculating the mean score for each of the questions listed on the test.  The mean or average of a group of numbers is the measure of central tendency most frequently used (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010). One of these characteristics is stability (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010) . 

            Question number one of the psychology test has twenty possible points.  Nine out of ten students answered the question correctly.  This question had a mean or average score of 1.8 out of a possible two points.  This particular question suffers from poor word choice in the question.  The test question uses the phrase “Who came up with psychosexual stages.”  This phrase is very vague.  An example of better wording could be “Who created the stage theory of psychosexual development.”  Quantitative item analysis identifies distractors or response options that are not doing what they are supposed to be doing (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010).  The response choices for number one include a response of Lady Gaga.  This response is a distraction and is obviously not the right answer.  The other two responses are not clear and can create confusion. 

Seven out of the ten students answered question two correctly.  The mean score for this question is 1.4.  The word choice in this question is also poor.  The question could be more effective with the use of the word “created” instead of “tested”. The test creator also uses the exact same answers for question two as they did in question number one.  Multiple choice answers should be challenging and require thought.

Only one out of ten students answered question number three correctly.   The mean score for this question is 0.2.  This question is an essay question that requires students to provide a short answer response.  The problem with this question lies within the test directions or lack thereof.  The authors state that it is important to check your directions for each item format to be sure they are clear (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010). 

All of the students answered question number four correctly.  The mean or average score for this question is 2.  This test format changes again with this question.  This question is a complete the sentence multiple-choice question.  However, most of the choices do not provide an option for making a complete understandable sentence.  The multiple choice answers are distracting and do not follow the format of the previous questions. 

Question number five has similar results as question number three.  Only one out of ten students answered this question correctly as well. The mean score for this question is 0.2.  This question is a fill in the blank format.  It is quite confusing to determine what the objective of this question is.  The test provides one possible answer below the question.  It is unclear if this answer was provided to the test takers or if it is merely showing the test scorer what the desired answer was for this question.

This hypothetical test was very confusing and lacked many essential items.  The test did not have clear concise directions for the test taker.  Many of the test response items were either distracting or not challenging.  The major issue that I saw within this assessment was the lack of consistency.  The test utilized four different assessment methods within five questions.  This test was composed of multiple choice, fill in the blank, short answer, and finish the sentence.   Quantitative and qualitative item analyses are essential approaches to finding out answers about test questions.  They allow you to find out where the problem areas are and to make sure test items are valid and reliable measurements of achievement (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2010).  There are risks to learning and assessment if these types of analysis are not administered.  Test constructors can expect to make errors in test construction that may include inappropriate, invalid, or deficient items. 

Works Cited

Kubiszyn, T., & Borich, G. (2010). Educational Testing & Measurement Classroom Application and Practice. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.