Page 313 - DEDU504_EDUCATIONAL_MEASUREMENT_AND_EVALUATION_ENGLISH

Unit 26: Achievement Test: Concept, Types and Construction

(2) No achievement test can be fully valid and fully reliable. Our aim should be to make it more Notes
and more valid and reliable.
(3) The essay type questions cannot be made fully objective however. Our effort should be guided
towards making them more and more objective. The same criterion applies to short answer
type questions; of course, they can be made more objective than the essay type questions.
(4) As far as the tests with only objective questions or items are, concerned, they can be made fully
objective, but they cannot be made fully valid and fully reliable.
(5) It is clear that no achievement test can be fully valid, reliable, objective and discriminating.
We can standardise it by making it more and more valid, reliable, objective and discriminating.

How is the final draft of the test Constructed ?

Writing of Questions
The next step after the finalization of the blueprint is writing appropriate questions in accordance
with the broad parameters set out in the blueprint. One should take one small block of the blueprint
at a time and write out the required questions. Thus, for each block of blueprint which is filled in,
questions have got to be written one by one. Once it is done, we have all the questions meeting the
necessary requirement laid down in the blueprint. While selecting each small block for writing a
question, you can proceed in several ways.
(a) either writing all questions (one by one) belonging to one objective at a time i.e. knowledge
or understanding or application followed by other objectives, or
(b) by taking up questions according to their form or type i.e. Essay Type followed by Short
Answer and Very Short Answer Type or in any other order, or
(c) by writing questions for one unit of the syllabus or portion to be covered by the test at a time.
Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages, too. Irrespective of the method followed, the
questions then have to be arranged in a logical sequence.
Marking Scheme

The fifth step is to prepare the “Marking Scheme”. The marking scheme helps prevent inconsistency
in judgement. In the marking scheme, possible responses to items in the test are structured. The
various value points for response are graded and the marks allowed to each value point indicated.
The marking scheme ensures objectivity in judgement and eliminates differences in score which
may be due to idiosyncrasies of the evaluator. The marking scheme, of course, includes the scoring
key, which is prepared in respect of objective type questions. Let us discuss this in detail.
Apart from the quality of the question paper, reliability of assessment, to a great extent, depends on
the degree of consistency of scores assigned to the students by different examiners or by the same
examiner on two different occasions. Thus, variation can occur because of any one of two different
reasons :
(i) Due to inconsistency of the same examiner when he/she examines different answer scripts
adopting different standards.
(ii) Due to different examiners using different standards of judgement.
If an answer script is awarded the same grade or marks on repeated exposure to the same examiner,
the examiner is said to be consistent in awarding the marks. As such, the assessment done by him/
her could be said to be more reliable and consistent than the other examiner in whose case variation
in award of marks is higher.
The factor contributing to variations in the standards of assessment, both at the intra-and the inter-
examiner levels, can be controlled by supplying a detailed scheme of marking along with the
expected answers so that every examiner may interpret the questions in the same way and attain the

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 307