Dimensions influencing students' judgments of classroom test items

Sixty-eight graduate students made general and specific ratings of the quality of 12 classroom test items, which varied in difficulty and discrimination. Four treatment combinations defined two additional factors: group discussion/no group discussion of test items and exposure/no exposure to an instructional module on test item construction. The students rated the items differentially, depending not only on item difficulty level but also on item discriminative power. The group discussion and exposure to module factors had significant effects on the general item ratings only. Implications of the research were discussed.