I think the best way to write a test is to first construct a table of specifications. This table crosses the content with the kinds of learning outcomes you want to assess. As an example, I’ll use language from the ARTIST website. On a first test, you might want to cover the five content areas of data types, univariate data representation, data production, measures of center, and measures of spread. You might want to assess the two learning outcomes of literacy and reasoning. Your table of specifications would include the five content areas as rows and the two learning outcomes as columns. Based on the importance that you attribute to each content area crossed with each outcome, you then fill in the table with the percentage of points on your test that you wish to assess that content-outcome combination. You choose the content areas and learning outcomes based on your course objectives. You then write your items. As I worked from tables like this one, I would alter the content, outcome, and percentages, as needed. This process also helped me identify content-outcome combinations that I thought were important enough to assess but that I hadn’t covered well in class. In other words, the process of creating this table and writing a test from it provided me with information that I fed back into my course planning and delivery.

I would ask other statistics instructors if I could look at their tests, and I also examined test banks that accompanied various introductory statistics texts. I rarely would use an item exactly as I found it, but I often wrote test items based on an idea found in these other sources.

I always try to begin my tests with a very easy item that assesses low-level understanding of an important but simple concept. My goal is to help students gain some confidence at the beginning of the test and to help them relax. It is amazing how difficult it can be to write an item that everyone answers correctly.

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