Revising test items in order to improve the item quality

A practical study using BJT Business Japanese Proficiency Test data as an example

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to show that those items that did not meet the statistical criteria to be entered into the item bank can be improved in terms of item statistics by rewriting them with a focus on item quality. We (1) selected those items that did not meet statistical criterion from the past Business Japanese Proficiency Test (BJT) administration, (2) rewrote those items by enhancing their quality, and (3) found that the revision did improve the statistical characteristics of those items based on experimental data.