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MANAGING THE ITEM DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

All of the tasks associated with managing test questions (items) are supported by the SMT-Bank system and accessed from the Item Development Menu.

• Edit/Data Entry allows the user to enter new items or edit existing items.
• Spec Fit determines how items fit into specifications.
• Status Code Maintenance is used to designate or review item statistics (e.g., active, pretest, retired, etc.)
• Produce Item Sheets prints individual items with relevant information.
• Bad pairs enables to designate items that may cue another item and should therefore not be used on the same test.
• Item Status Report is a table that displays the number of items of each status within a given content area..
• IRT Search Report searches for items with specific statistical characteristics.
• Counts by Author generates a list of authors and the number of items each has written.
• Key Distribution by Spec displays the distribution of correct answers (keys).

The SMT-Bank system stores all of the information about each item with that item. When the test developer or user views an item, he or she is able to comprehensively understand the item’s attributes and can execute item-related tasks directly from the Item Screen itself.

The information stored with the item includes the Test Specification Designation, the Author, References, Item Status, Status History, Image Pathways (images are stored so that copying them into the item is not necessary, thus maintaining image quality), Item Weight (Default = 1), Item Set Information (if the item is part of a set), the Rationale for correct and incorrect responses, the Key, any Comments about the item, and Standard Setting Data (for IRT applications).

In addition to storing important information, the user can execute many vital functions from the Item Screen. These include maintaining a list of item writers, conducting searches based upon key words (up to 8 key words may be stored with each item), conducting searches based upon item bank number or other criteria, creating passages (for example, the user may want to store item exhibits, calculations, or instructions with the item), and printing various outputs. One important output is the Item Sheet. The Item Sheet contains the item text, all relevant information about the item and item statistics, including discrimination index, difficulty index, and the distribution of candidate responses among response options.

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