Development of Achievement Tests

Abstract

The writer of this academic article aims to present the knowledge about the process of item writing to measure academic achievement. Teachers principally use items to assess competency as well as knowledge of their learners. Thus, the items should be of high quality, especially related to content validity so that test score can be the representative of learners’ competency and knowledge. The content of this article composes of 6 sections as follow: 1) Type of tests which vary depending on criteria used to classify them. 2) Principles for item writing, such as the correlation between items and learning outcome, types of test selection, item difficulty and time used for testing, etc. 3) Composition of tests, such as guidelines for doing the tests, stem and alternatives. 4) Principles of item writing and types, the items which are classified by answer formatting as follow: 4.1) Supply types that compose of essay questions, short answers and completion and 4.2) Selection types that compose of true-false, matching and multiple choices. All of the above have different principles for writing and objectives to assess knowledge. 5) Process of item writing composes of 6 steps as follow: firstly, setting test objectives, setting learning objectives, setting a test blueprint, stem and alternative writing, and finally quality checking. And 6) Conclusion.