Item Authoring and Banking Flashcards
7 cards from real CBT practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 Item Authoring and Banking flashcards as text
An item development team uses a 'style guide' for item authoring primarily to ensure:
Answer: Consistency in grammar, formatting, and tone across all items
A style guide standardizes writing conventions so that no item appears noticeably different from others, reducing construct-irrelevant cues.
Which item bank field is MOST critical for preventing overexposure of secure items?
Answer: Administration count / usage history
Tracking how many times an item has been administered allows test developers to retire or rotate items before they become widely known.
A test developer notices that an item's point-biserial correlation is negative. This MOST likely indicates:
Answer: High-scoring candidates are choosing a wrong option more than low-scoring candidates
A negative point-biserial means candidates who scored high overall are getting the item wrong, suggesting a keying error or a flawed stem.
Which of the following BEST describes the role of a 'blueprint' in item banking?
Answer: A specification document defining content domains, cognitive levels, and item counts for a test form
A test blueprint (or table of specifications) defines how many items per content area and cognitive level must appear on each form.
In computer-adaptive testing (CAT), item bank size requirements are larger than for linear tests primarily because:
Answer: A large pool is needed to prevent item overexposure and maintain content coverage across all ability levels
CAT selects items adaptively from the pool, requiring sufficient items at every difficulty level to cover all candidates while limiting repeat exposure.
When an item stem includes the phrase 'which of the following is NOT,' what review consideration is MOST important?
Answer: Capitalize or bold the word NOT to prevent misreading
Negative stems are permitted but must be visually emphasized so candidates do not miss the negation and answer the wrong question.
Which of the following is the BEST definition of 'item shells' in item authoring?
Answer: Template structures with variable content slots that allow rapid generation of parallel items
Item shells (or item templates) provide a fixed stem structure with variable slots, enabling efficient production of many parallel items from one template.