EXPLORING ITEM CHARACTERISTICS THAT ARE RELATED TO THE DIFFICULTY OF TOEFL DIALOGUE ITEMS

Abstract

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between a set of item characteristics and the difficulty of TOEFL® dialogue items. Identifying characteristics that are related to item difficulty has the potential to improve the efficiency of the item‐writing process The study employed 365 TOEFL dialogue items, which were coded on 49 variables, including 5 significant variables reported in Nissan, DeVincenzi, and Tang (1996). Of the 5 significant variables in Nissan et al., 3 correlated significantly with item difficulty in this study. Another 11 met a critical probability criterion. These 11 included representatives from three broad categories of variables: 2 in the category of word‐level factors, 1 in the category of discourse‐level factors, and 8 in the category of task‐processing factors. Multiple regression analyses indicate that the variables in this study account for about 40% of the variance in item difficulty.

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