Objective: To determine difficulty index, discrimination index and distractor effectiveness of items included in MCQs paper of Ophthalmology.
Methodology: A cross-sectional descriptive study was carried out to determine Difficulty index, Discrimination Index and Distractor Effectives of MCQs included in Ophthalmology send up MCQs exam held in September 2017. 324 solved MCQ papers were collected from Ophthalmology department of Rawalpindi Medical University. These papers were arranged in accordance with scores obtained by the students from highest to lowest. Out of all these papers, MCQ marks of 216 papers were considered in such a way that scores of upper 1/3 (108 high performing students) and lower 1/3 (108 low performing students) were enrolled in this study for item analysis through purposive sampling. Difficulty index, discrimination index and distractor effectiveness were computed for all the items. Data was analyzed by using SPSS version 20.
Results: Four (13.3%) MCQs were found to be moderately difficult while 24 (80%) and 2 (6.7%) items were very easy and very difficult, respectively. 22 (73.3%) items had poor discrimination index while 5 (16.7%) and 3 (10%) items were analyzed to be good and excellent discriminators, respectively. 21 (70%) items had no Non-Functional Distractor whereas 5 (16.7%) and 4 (13.3%) items were analyzed to have 2 and 3 NFD, respectively.
Conclusion: Item analysis of MCQs in medical sciences is the need of time to achieve the intended learning outcomes and to amplify the quality of medical education.
Key words: item analysis, difficulty index, discrimination index, distractor effectiveness
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