Open AccessEXPLORING ITEM CHARACTERISTICS THAT ARE RELATED TO THE DIFFICULTY OF TOEFL DIALOGUE ITEMS
Author(s) -
Kostin Irene
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
ets research report series
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.235
H-Index - 5
ISSN - 2330-8516
DOI - 10.1002/j.2333-8504.2004.tb01938.x
Subject(s) - test of english as a foreign language , psychology , variance (accounting) , set (abstract data type) , variables , task (project management) , regression analysis , statistics , item analysis , natural language processing , social psychology , mathematics education , computer science , mathematics , psychometrics , developmental psychology , english language , accounting , management , economics , business , programming language
The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between a set of item characteristics and the difficulty of TOEFL® dialogue items. Identifying characteristics that are related to item difficulty has the potential to improve the efficiency of the item‐writing process The study employed 365 TOEFL dialogue items, which were coded on 49 variables, including 5 significant variables reported in Nissan, DeVincenzi, and Tang (1996). Of the 5 significant variables in Nissan et al., 3 correlated significantly with item difficulty in this study. Another 11 met a critical probability criterion. These 11 included representatives from three broad categories of variables: 2 in the category of word‐level factors, 1 in the category of discourse‐level factors, and 8 in the category of task‐processing factors. Multiple regression analyses indicate that the variables in this study account for about 40% of the variance in item difficulty.