Running Item Analysis on a Test

Item analysis provides statistics on overall test performance and individual test questions. This data helps you recognise questions that might be poor discriminators of student performance. You can use this information to improve questions for future test administrations or to adjust credit on current attempts. To run an item analysis report on a test it must be deployed, and have submitted attempts. Item analysis is not available to surveys. The link to run an item analysis report can be found in the Control Panel under Tests, Surveys and Pools (the link can also be found in the Grade Centre or at the deployed test in a content area).

About the report

Once an item analysis report has been generated you are presented with an overall summary of question performance. You can select an individual question to view further detail on student performance. Dr Ant Edwards (University of York Maths Skills Centre) has produced a short video which describes how discrimination and difficulty are calculated in an item analysis report.

Further guidance

Visit the Blackboard Help Website where item analysis is described in more detail and the use of the Pearson correlation coefficient is explained in relation to calculating discrimintation values.