Current Situation and Trends regarding Test Item Disclosure in Japanese National Examinations

Abstract

It has been pointed out that test item disclosure after implementation is one of the characteristics of the “Japanese Test Culture” in Japanese official large-scale examinations. It has been considered that one of the causative factors is that the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications requires the test item disclosure in national examinations. However, the situation regarding test item disclosure has not been investigated comprehensively until now.

In this study, first, we comprehensively investigated whether the test items were disclosed, then we analyzed the relationship between test item disclosure and the characteristics of the examination.

As a result, we ascertained that the real test items were not disclosed in several examinations, instead only sample items were disclosed. It is suggested that these examinations show similar trends in points of (1) frequency of implementation per year, (2) announcement of the pass-fail score before or after implementation and (3) examination fee.