Achievement test and Diagnostic test

Achievement Test Achievement test is a test designed to measure the knowledge or proficiency of an individual in something that has been learned or taught. These are used to find out how much a student has learnt from a given course of study taken by him in a year or semester or whatever be the duration of the course. Construction of an achievement test Different steps in the construction of an achievement test are the following. - Planning of the test - Preparation of the design - Preparation of blue print - Writing of questions - Editing of items - Preparation of Scoring key and Marking scheme and - Question wise analysis Each stage in the construction of an achievement test is discussed below. 1. Planning of the test Before the construction process, the paper setter should think about the content to be tested, the objectives to be achieved, maximum time, maximum marks and the nature of the test. 2. Preparation of design The objectives, content, form of questions, difficulty level of items, scheme of options are the important factors to be considered in a design. That is , it specifies the weightages to i) instructional objectives ii) units and subunits of the course content iii) types or forms of questions and iv) levels of difficulty. The design may indicate whether there are any options in the question paper. 3. Preparation of blue print The policy decisions specified in the design are translated in to action through blue print. Blue print is a three-dimensional chart including the instructional objectives in one dimension, course content in the second dimension and the form of questions in the third dimension. A blue print necessitates a test constructor to decide about the specific nature of the question paper. That is, at this stage, the paper setter divides how many questions of each form should be selected from the first content, from the second content and so on for each instructional objective. That is, the paper setter decides how the questions are to be distributed over different objectives and content areas so as to obtain the weightages decided in the design. 4. Writing of items /questions The next step is writing of appropriate, quality items specified in the blue print. The blue print gives a very clear idea about the number of questions to be written from each topic, their forms and objectives. 5. Editing of items The questions should be arranged so that all items of the same type are grouped together and according to the difficulty. 6. Preparation of Scoring key and Marking scheme In order to maintain objectivity, scoring should be done strictly in accordance with a pre-designed scheme of evaluation. Scoring key is the value points of objective type questions. Marking scheme is prepared for short answer and essay type questions. In preparing marking scheme what the examiner has to do is to list out the value points to be credited and then to fix up the mark to be given to each value point. 7. Question wise analysis The next step in the construction of an achievement test is question wise analysis. In question wise analysis, the paper setter analyses each question on various parameters stated in the blue print. That is, each question is analysed in terms of content, objective, specification, form of questions, difficulty level, marks and estimated time. This helps him to ensure that there is no imbalance in the question paper. That is question wise analysis is an evaluation of the question paper.