Standard Stages in Assessment Instrument Development

Standard Stages in Assessment Instrument Development

By

Yahya Alaidrus

Hendrik M

        It is essential to have a clear definition of  what assessment is before we come to discussing standard stages in assessment instrument development. Assessment refers to information gathering process about learners (through various sources), concerning what they know and what they can perform (Fulcher & Davidson, 2007). The information might be used as a basis for decision-making (Gronlund, 1982, Fulcher & Davidson, 2007, Brown, 2003 ). Assessment should at least measure competence and have positive backwash toward teaching or learning.

            Refering to the above definition, then developing assessment instrument should consider the following pivotal procedures; planning, preparing, reviewing/revising, trying out, analyzing the results, assembling and reproducing final form (Gronlund, 1982, Hughes, 2003). In planning, the first thing is determining the purpose. The purpose of the assessment instrument should be made clear before it is developed. Whether it is used at the beginning of instruction (entrance behavior), during teaching(formative or diagnostic), or at the end of learning program (summative) (Gronlund, 1982, Hughes, 2003, Harmer, 2001) . The assessment instrument might also intend to figure out a person’s competence regardless of any education program that he or she has ever taken (proficiency). In preparing the assessment instrument, it is important to make a table of assessment item specification based on the purpose of assessment. This is done to ensure that the instrument measure the only intended domain (validity). After assessment items are made, they need to be reviewed or revised if they are thought to be unclear or even ambiguous. After simple review or revision is through, the instrument need to be tried out and analyzed. The instrument try-outand analysis are expected to produce good assessment items in terms of difficulty level, discriminating power, and effectiveness of distractors (for multiple-choice items only). After the analysis is accomplished with some revised or discarded items, final forms are assembled and reproduced. The end of the activity is producing appropriate scoring rubrics to ensure that the information gained is good for decision making.

            In sum, the above standard stages in assessment instrument development should be taken into account in producinggood quality of assessment instrument.

References

Brown, D.H. (2003). Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom Practices. Longman

Fulcher, G. & Davidson, F.(2007). Language Testing and Assessment: An advanced resource book. New York. Routldge.

Gronlund, N.E. (1982). Constructing Achievement Tests. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey:Prantice Hall, Inc.

Hughes, A. (2003). Testing for Language Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Harmer, J. (2001). The Practice of English Language Teaching. Essex. England. Pearson Education Limited.