Test and Essay Items

     The Thought Process and Rationale of Test and Essay Items

 The objective test items and essay items explain the process of understanding how to measure the learning objective of a lesson. Choosing the best test item that supports the intended learning objective is vital to individuals’ learning process. The thought process and rationale behind the test items and essay items include selecting the correct category of Bloom’s Taxonomy that best measures the learning outcome. Kubiszyn & Borich (2013) discussed that the writing stage of test construction depends upon the format or combination of formats to use for the test. Often, the learning objective or objectives partially made the decision for writing the test item. In many instances, however, there are choices among several item formats.

     The selection of multiple choice questions provide the educator with the opportunity of writing the objective item to the knowledge level of the educational objective. This requires caution because there is a tendency to write the high-level stage of test items. In writing the high-level multiple choice test items for the learning objective, the test item relates to the level of the learner and measures the targeted area of the cognitive domain within Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Using matching test items provides the educator with ability to measure the learners’ ability to apply the intended category of the learning objective. The matching test items must be homogenous and contain a well-thought process when constructing the items. According to Kubiszyn & Borich (2013), the list of descriptions should contain the longer phrases or statements and should be on the left, while the options in the right column should consist of short phrases, words, or symbols.

     Essay items like test items has the tendency for educators to construct well-written or poorly written items. The use of essay items depends upon the measurement of the learning objective that depicts the learners’ ability to explain the correct answer. The student must compose a response, often extensive, to a question for which no single response or pattern of responses can be cited as correct to the exclusion of all other answers. The accuracy and quality of such a response can often be judged only by a person skilled and informed in the subject area being tested (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2013). The learners’ response indicates the cognitive skills and makes it easy for the educator to evaluate the learners’ ability to formulate the answer.

Reference

Kubiszyn, T. & Borich, G. (2013). Educational testing & measurement:
Classroom application
and practice (10th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.