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Where's the difficulty in standardized reading tests: the passage or the question?
Yasuhiro Ozuru1, Michael Rowe, Tenaha O'Reilly
1University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee, USA. yasozuru@uic.edu
Behavior Research Methods
|November 13, 2008
Summary
Item difficulty in reading comprehension tests is influenced by text features. Vocabulary difficulty significantly impacts 7th-9th grade tests, while 10th-12th grade tests show less text-based influence.
Area of Science:
- Educational Psychology
- Reading Comprehension Research
Background:
- Reading comprehension tests are crucial for assessing student abilities.
- Understanding factors influencing item difficulty is key to test design and interpretation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how item and text characteristics predict item difficulty.
- To analyze these predictors for the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests at 7th-9th and 10th-12th grade levels.
Main Methods:
- Conducted detailed item-based analyses on 192 comprehension questions.
- Utilized a cognitive processing model framework.
- Employed hierarchical linear modeling to analyze passage and question features.
Main Results:
- Text features, particularly vocabulary difficulty, significantly influenced item difficulty for 7th-9th graders.
- Text features had a less systematic influence on item difficulty for 10th-12th graders.
Conclusions:
- Vocabulary difficulty is a primary driver of reading comprehension item difficulty in early secondary grades.
- The predictive power of text features on item difficulty diminishes in later secondary grades.
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