Item’s Analysis in Health Education at the High School of Health Science of Tunis

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume V, Issue XI, November 2021 | ISSN 2454–6186

Item’s Analysis in Health Education at the High School of Health Science of Tunis

Kaouther MEJRI¹, Sonia MAHJOUB², Fatma AYDI ³, Issam SALOUAGE^4
1,2,3,4 The high school of health science and technologies of Tunis. El Manar University, Tunisia
²Faculty of Medicine of Tunis, El Manar University, Tunisia

Abstract: Assessment is a crucial step in learning evaluation since it reflects the improvement of the quality of education. Thus, educators are always challenged while analyzing the performance of their students. The study aims to evaluate the quality of written exams set for under graduated students (2017-2019) in the biology department of the high school of health science and technologies. We used the item analysis tools: difficulty index, discrimination index and for the reliability the Cronbach alpha assessing available data during the study period (2017-2019). The study involved 2960 copies related to 104 tests including 1367 questions. We found that 5.3% of the questions were difficult, 44.18% were easy 49.52% with moderate difficulties, 19.38% with excellent discrimination, 10.53% with good discrimination. The test reliability was good in only 10.5% of the tests. Our research objectively analyzed the quality of questions, yet it revealed the presence of some deficiencies suggesting the improvement of the quality of assessment.
Key words: assessment, difficulty index, discrimination index, reliability.

Abbreviations: SAQ: short assay questions, LEQ: long assay questions, MCQ: multiple choice questions, IWF: items writing flaws, FD: functional distractors, NFD: nonfunctional distractor, DE: distractor efficiency, SD: standard deviation

I. INTRODUCTION

Assessment is a crucial step in learning evaluation. In fact, the role of student’s appraisal in learning and their feed-back is to improve teaching-learning experience [1]. Thus, educators are always challenged while analyzing the performance of their students. Since they will be safe practitioners in future, paramedics and health students as well as their medical colleagues need to be efficiently assessed for their knowledge, skills and competency ‎[2]. Health science students are evaluated by various methods: multiple choice questions (MCQ), short answer questions (SAQ), long essay questions (LEQ), case studies, etc ‎[3]- ‎[6]. Because of their objectivity, elimination of the assessor’s favoritism, extensive coverage of the subject in short period, MCQ are frequently used compared to the other types. Actually, marking the later ones is time consuming and may involve assessor’s biases.‎[7]‎[8]
Item analysis is the tool used to evaluate the quality of tests. It analyzes the performance of the individual and the overall test using different parameters such as difficulty index, discrimination index and test reliability. ‎[9]‎[10]

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