APPLICATION OF ITEM ANALYSIS TO EVALUATE THE QUALITY OF NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT AND ECONOMY TEST ITEMS AT NORTHWEST UNIVERSITY, KANO

Assessment of learning involves determining whether the content and objectives of education have been mastered by administering quality tests. However, the quality of the test items used in evaluating students’ achievement has been a major area of concern in teaching and research. This paper assessed the quality of Nigerian Government and Economy (NGE) Examination items of Northwest University, Kano by conducting item analysis. The developed one hundred (100) questions was administered to N=256 undergraduate students. The data obtained was analysed by conducting item analysis to determine the item difficulty, item discrimination indices, as well as the distractors analysis. Results indicate that, based on difficulty indices 55(55%) items were “defective” or “faulty”, 66(66%) of the items have poor discriminating power. Similarly, the result of the distracter analysis showed 59(28%) of the distracters been flawed, having failed to meet the set minimum standards. Based on the findings it can be concluded that the test used has not been validated during the item development processes. It is recommended that, the Nigerian Government and Economy (NGE) test items used in measuring students’ achievement should be adequately improve through formal processes of standardisation and validation by conducting item analysis to ensure its reliability and minimise measurement errors.