CORRELATION OF DIFFICULTY INDEX AND DISCRIMINATING INDEX IN MEDICAL STUDENT’S ASSESSMENT.

Abstract

Multiple choice questions are nowadays used in competitive examination and formative assessment to assess the student's eligibility and certification.Item analysis is the process of collecting,summarizing and using information from students' responses to assess the quality of test items.Goal of the study was to identify the relationship between the item difficulty index and item discriminating index in medical student's assessment. 400 final year medical students from various medical colleges responded 200 items constructed for the study.The responses were assessed and analysed for item difficulty index and item discriminating power. Item difficulty index an item discriminating power were analysed by statical methods to identify correlation.The discriminating power of the items with difficulty index in 40%-50% was the highest. Summary and Conclusion:Items with good difficulty index in range of 30%-70% are good discriminator.