Characteristics of good test

           Introduction


A test is an assessment intended to measure a test-takers knowledge, skill, attitude, physical fitness, or classification in many other topics. A good test generally defined as one that is reliable, valid, practical, socially sensitive and candidate friendly.

     Characteristics of good test


The following points highlight the main characters of a good test. The characteristics are: 
1. Validity
2. Reliability
3. Objectivity
4. Norms

    1. Validity
The first important characteristic of a good test is validity. The test must really measure what it has been designed to measure. Validity is of an assessed by exploring how the test scores correspond to some criteria, that is same behaviour, personal accomplishment or characteristic that reflects the attribute that the test designed to gauge. 
Assessing the validity of any test requires careful selection of appropriate criterion measure and that reasonable people may disagree as to which criterion measure is best. This is equally true of intelligence test. Reasonable people may disagree as to whether the best criterion measure of intelligence in school grades, teacher ratings or some other measures.
Only valid test can give useful information about people but the correction coefficients for validity are never as high as those for reliability. Though we try for reliability is of 90 or 60, validities which have corrections between test scores and criterion measures are not higher than that of several test with low but significant validity can sometimes be useful, if they are given together as a battery and their results are considered together. One reason that validity coefficients are lower than reliability coefficient is that the reliability of test sets limits on how valid the test can be.

    2. Reliability
A good test should be highly reliable. This means that the test should give similar results even though different testers administrate it, different peoples scores in different forms of the test are given and the same person takes that test at two or more different times. Reliability is usually checked by comparing different sets of scores. 
If tests with low reliability are used, their scores should be interpreted with caution. To improve reliability we should ensure that the test is administered and scored by a truly standard procedure. Making the test procedure uniform might make the test more reliable. 
In actual practice, psychological tests are never perfectly reliable. One reason is that changes do occur in individuals over time; for example, a person who scores low in her group at an initial testing may develop new skills that rise her to a higher position in the group at the time of the second testing.

    3. Objectivity
By objectivity of a measuring instrument is meant for the degree to which equally competent users get the same results. This presupposes subjective factor a test is objective when it makes for the elimination of the scorer's personal opinion bias judgement. The recognition of the quality of objectivity in a test has been largely responsible for the development of an arised and objective type tests.
Objective based test measure or evaluate the entire human development in three domains that is cognitive, affective and psychomotor. As a name itself indicates they are based on particular objective of teaching and evaluating. They provide proper direction, and thus streamline the whole process of evaluation. These tests are all comprehensives. 

    4. Norms
In addition to reliability and validity good test need norms. Norms are sets of score obtained by whom the test is intended. The scores obtained by these groups provide a basic for interpreting any individual score.
 To understand why norms are important, let us imagine a test that does not have any, suppose a person takes a newly developed intellectual aptitude test and requires a score of 437 I.D. this is a "Good Score", should the person be happy or unhappy. Obviously a score without any basis for comparison is not very useful.

    5. Practical
A good test should be practical find it can be defined with the balancing of number of factors.
 a. Length- a shorter test is generally preferred.
 b. Time- a test that takes less time is generally preferred. 
 c. Low cost- speaks for itself. 
 d. Easy to administer.
 e. Easy to score.
 f. Differentiate between candidates- a test is of little value if all the applicants obtain the same score.
 g. Adequate test manual- provides a test manual offering adequate information and documentation.
 h. Professionalism- is produced by test developers possessing high levels of expertise.
The issue of the practicality of a test is a subject to judgement, which will be impacted by the constraints facing the public sector jurisdiction. 

    6. Socially Sensitive
A consideration of the social implications and effects of the use of a test is critical in public sector, especially for high stakes jobs such as public safety occupations. The public safety assessment professional must be considerate of and responsive to multiple group of stakeholders.

    7. Maintainable
The best way to keep your test maintainable is to be organised, follow coding best practices, and develop a consistent process that works for you and your team. There are frameworks, like Mocha built to help you with maintainability.

    8. Comprehensive
It covers all the items that have been taught or studied. It includes items from different areas of the material assigned for the test so as to check accurately the amount of student's knowledge.

    9. Economical
It makes the best use of the teachers limited time for preparing and grading and it make the best use of The Peoples assigned time for answering all items. So, we can say that oral exam in classes of + 30 students are not economical as it requires too much time and effort to be conducted.

          Conclusion


In the light of the above characteristics I should say that by using these characteristics you can build your own test and evaluate best strategies for the development of a good test.

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