Development of qualified items for nursing education assessment: The progress testing experience.

Area of Science:

• Nursing Education
• Psychometric Analysis
• Knowledge Assessment

Background:

• Progress testing is a validated method for evaluating undergraduate nursing education.
• It identifies knowledge gain progressively, benefiting nursing students.
• High psychometric performance of test items is crucial for reliable results.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze the psychometric characteristics of nursing inter-institutional progress testing items.
• Evaluate item difficulty and discrimination across multiple years (2019, 2021-2023).

Main Methods:

• Cross-sectional study analyzing 377 multiple-choice items.
• Data from 4678 students across four years of progress testing.
• Difficulty and discrimination indexes analyzed using descriptive statistics, ANOVA, and regression.

Main Results:

• Average item difficulty index ranged from 0.39 to 0.46.
• Discrimination index ranged from 0.35 to 0.43, showing a significant annual increase (p < 0.001).
• Final-year students exhibited lower difficulty and discrimination, indicating easier tests and less performance dispersion.

Conclusions:

• Nursing progress test items demonstrate good discrimination and are not excessively difficult.
• A notable annual increase in item discrimination was observed.
• Findings support psychometric analysis and quality assurance for knowledge assessment items in nursing.