Circulate a “best practice document” for a test design process based on accepted procedures. The document needs to:

(a) be consistently used in Awarding Organisations

(b) generate agreement on the adoption of strategies to implement item analysis procedures during the preparation stage of each examination.

Content analysis for planning language modifications

Detailed content analysis is necessary to examine test tasks and their suitability for the test takers who are likely to be affected by the test. Content analysis can reveal a number of aspects including unnecessary use of terminology or difficult-to-comprehend language (which applies to all weak readers). If such difficult-to-comprehend items or task are used in tests, appropriate language modifications would be needed to make the test more language-accessible.

Developing a check list for test item review

Checklists have been used on a regular basis by test review panels (of two or three test reviewers). These reviewers check all items or tasks for all aspects of fairness in testing such as offensive or insulting language or topics or unfair penalisation based on topics. Based on such reviews, items or tasks are green-lighted on to be part of a test (if no problems are detected) or are revised or deleted from the test.

Responding to Proposal 5

Please complete the response form online. The form is available to print at Annex 1 of the PDF version of this consultation.