Adapting the Guidelines for Writing Selected-Response Items to the Scale for Acquisition of Japanese Word Meanings

Abstract

Item writing guidelines define the general standards that item writersshould follow in order to avoid flawed items. These guidelines should beadjusted or elaborated when applied to specific assessments that differin their purposes and measurement contents. This study createdselected-response item-writing guidelines specific to the Scale forAcquisition of Japanese Word Meanings and produced pairs ofmultiple-choice test items for each of the same stem words so that oneof each pair follows a particular guideline and the other does not. Weexamined the effects of three particular guidelines on psychometricproperties of these test items. The results indicated that the itemdifficulty was higher when the guideline ``the correct response shouldnot be more difficult than the stem word'' was not followed, but noeffect was found for the other two guidelines. Practical issues andimplications in applying these guidelines have been discussed.