QUESTION BANK PREPARATION, VALIDATION, MODERATION BY PANEL, UTILIZATION AND DEVELOPING A SYSTEM FOR MAINTAINING CONFIDENTIALITY

1. QUESTION BANK PREPARATION,
VALIDATION, MODERATION BY PANEL,
UTILIZATION AND DEVELOPING A SYSTEM
FOR MAINTAINING CONFIDENTIALITY
-BY SHWETA SHARMA
MSC. NURSING I YEAR
AIIMS,JODHPUR

2. DEFINITION
• The question bank may be defined as a kind of reservoir of a
number of sets of questions on each subject in which
examination is to be held and from which a set for any particular
examination could be picked out at random and at short notice and
sent to the press.
• “An item bank is defined as an organized collection of test items that
can be assessed for test development.” - Rudner
• “An item bank or question bank is a collection of test items organized,
classified and catalogues the order to facilitate the construction of a
variety of achievement and other types of mental test.”
- B. H. Choppin

3. CHARACTERISTICS OF QUESTION BANK
• Based on sound ideas, purposes & adapted to the
particular objective of mind.
• Within the range of the student’s experiences &
knowledge.
• Present a challenge which stimulates an educative
response in keeping with the objectives.
• Contain only one idea, a many faceted questions only
confuse the students, who usually answer one phase and
forget the other.

4. •Continuous process.
•Based on action.
•Present for any particular course, level,
language, selected category and type of
questions.
•Maintains records of any number of questions
with their answers in all the languages with their
corresponding courses, categories and levels.

5. •Improve the teaching
learning process.
•Growth of students.
• Preparation of
competitive exams.
•To improve evaluation
process.

6. •Questions from the question bank can be
used by the teacher at the pre-testing stage,
for setting question papers, for measuring
student’s achievement, etc.
•A pool of test items can be used for formative
and summative evaluation of the student’s
performance.

7. NEED
•To save time.
•Construction of test questions on the spot is
rather difficult. It is time consuming.
•If there is an item or question bank, the material
from it can be used by any teacher and by any
school.
•To produce and evaluate questions.

9. • Spend adequate amount of time for developing the
questions.
• Match the questions to the content.
• Try to make the question valid, reliable, and balanced.
• Use a variety of testing methods.
• Write questions that tests skills other than recall.
• While framing question it has to be ensured that they are
unambiguous, simple in the language and brief as far as
possible.

10. • Each of the question should evaluate some specific content area
or learning outcome.
• Their difficulty level should be appropriate to the group of learners
being tested.
• Each question should be accompanied with some specific
information.
• All the objective items should be grouped in one section, while the
short answer type and essay type item should be in another
section.
• In the section of objective type, items having the same format
should be grouped together.

11. PREPARATION OF QUESTION BANK
The following things have to be kept in mind while preparing questions:
•A large number of questions should be prepared on each topic or unit
of the syllabus.
•The whole syllabus of a particular class should be divided into
different convenient topics.
•Different experts should be assigned different topics in order of their
preferences.
•Spent adequate amount of time in developing the questions.
•Match the questions to the content taught.
•Try to make the question valid, reliable and balanced.

12. •Use a variety of testing methods.
•Write questions that test skills other than to measure
knowledge, to measure comprehension, to measure application,
to measure analysis, to measure synthesis and to measure
evaluation.
•To select items finally, after making item analysis, experts
should be asked to construct items 3 times more than the actual
items to be selected.
•All the selected questions are standardized by adopting a
systematic procedure.

14. GUIDELINE / STEPS TO PREPARE BLUE
PRINT:
•Content analysis
•Determination of learning objectives
•Determination of number of items for each topic
based on learning objectives
•Determining the types of questions

15. 1. CONTENT ANALYSIS

16. 2. DETERMINATION OF LEARNING
OBJECTIVE

17. 3. DETERMINATION OF NUMBER OF ITEMS FOR
EACH TOPIC BASED ON LEARNING OBJECTIVES

19. 4. DETERMINING THE TYPES OF
QUESTIONS

20. PLANNING OF
QUESTION BANK

21. SCREENING OF QUESTIONS

22. ITEM REVIEW
PANELING MODERATING

23. However, the items themselves should be in as good a condition
as possible before they are duplicated and sent to panel
members:
•Worked over as much as time permits, not just raw drafts.
•Typed, not hand-written.
•Numbered and ordered, not random.
•Complete with stimulus.
•Any line references made have been indicated clearly in
passage and items.
•Laid out in standard form.

24. PROCESS OF ITEM ANALYSIS
Information is obtained about:
1.The parts of an item, especially in multiple choice format with its
stems, keyed answers and distractors.
2.The integrity or worthwhileness of the item as a whole.
3.The performance of the item as a discrete test element.
4.The performance of an item with regard to other items in the same set
or test.
5.The integrity or worthwhileness of the test as a whole.

25. EDITING FOR PUBLICATION
1.Read the item analysis .
2.Edit items and establish a final pool of items for the
test.
3.Check the specification against this pool for the
number and qualities of the items available.
4.Assign the items to a tentative order for the whole test
and enter the scoring scheme at the end of each section
of the test.

26. 5.Check this order for:
a)Order of difficulty
b)Keyed answer order and distribution
c)Balance and variety of item type
6.Write or insert appropriate instructions for candidates.
7. Allow sufficient space for answering, if there is to be no
separate answer sheet.
8.Number all separate items consecutively. Use letters to
distinguish sections of the test if necessary.

27. 9.Make a mock-up of the test paper (and answer sheet if used).
Read the paper thorough from beginning to end, to check language,
numbering (pages and any line-numbers used), all labelling and
diagrams, and the layout in general.
10.Photocopy the mock-up and ask a colleague who knows about
the subject (but who has not seen the test) to ‘do the test’ on this
copy.
11.Check the trial completion by the colleague.
12.If possible, put the test aside for a week and then do it yourself
as a final check. Only then can you send the copy to the printer.

28. PREPARING THE QUESTION CARDS

29. REVIEW AND REMOVAL OF
UNWANTED QUESTIONS
•Enrichment of questions by updating, replacing,
discarding, modifying, adding new questions,
regrouping and classification is to be an ongoing
process to give the question bank a dynamic
look.

30. VALIDATION
USES OF VALIDATION:
• Relevance is obtained.
• Grammatical correction done.
• Plausibility of distracters checked.
• Can be used as effective tool in class room teaching.
• Avoids dangerous situations.
• A feedback to teachers.
• Create better learning process.

31. MODERATION BY PANEL
Internal
moderation
External
moderation

32. PURPOSES
• The task is clear in each item and the person attempting an
item will know what is expected. The task in an item is
understood in the same way by all candidates.
• The items are expressed in a language which is as clear as
possible to the candidates.
• The items are set within and based on the objectives and
course contents outlined in the syllabus.
• The questions are well distributed in the different parts of the
syllabus course contents/cover syllabus adequately.

33. • The items are fair assessment of candidates at a particular
level and if they are not, they should be tempered to the level
of the candidates, actually, among others, that are moderators.
• The items are technically correct and accurate, offering the
best way testing the concepts or principles or knowledge it is
intended to test. They should not have clues to the correct
answers.
• The items are original and not just copied from the text books
or past examination papers.

34. UTILIZATION OF QUESTION BANK
• A judicious selection of questions can be made for instructional
purpose.
• Different types of questions selected from a question bank may be
used for pre-testing, development, review and revision of a lesson.
• In the preparation of textual material, a question poll can be utilized
for preparing review exercises in the text books.
• The preparation of teaching units or resource units also involve the
use of evaluation materials which may be picked up from the
question bank.

35. ADVANTAGES OF QUESTION BANK
•It is storage of a large number of questions.
•It saves time and energy over conventional test development.
•Question bank makes available ready-made test items for use
by every teacher.
•It provides platform for discussing curriculum goals and
objectives.
•Most of the examination weakness is minimized by using
question banks.

36. DISADVANTAGES OF QUESTION
BANK
•It requires a great deal of work in terms of
preparation and planning.
•All the items should be analyzed before including in
the question bank.
•Item analysis involves the use of various
mathematical and statistical procedures.

38. OBJECTIVES TO MAINTAIN
CONFIDENTIALITY
1.To eliminate the possibility of leakage at the various stages
of preparation of papers i.e. while typing, printing and
distributing.
2.To prepare a question bank for each subject, and these are
to be prepared by subject experts and checked and verified
by other experts, to enable random generation and as far as
possible, error free examination papers.

39. PROCEDURE TO MAINTAIN
CONFIDENTIALITY
1.For each subject, 4 sets of question papers are prepared.
2.These question papers can be decrypted by entering 3 levels of
passwords, in addition to a college password.
3.The question banks are prepared by experienced faculty in the
respective subjects.
4.These question banks are moderated by other faculty members, who
check the questions for correctness and who make any changes if
required.
5.These questions are then converted to latex format for random
generation.

40. RESOURCES REQUIRED
•A well-maintained computer laboratory
•Trained data entry operators
•Continuous high-speed internet connectivity
•Sufficient space for storage and moderation
of question banks.

41. ADVANTAGES OF MAINTAINING
CONFIDENTIALITY
• The possibility of leakage from the paper setter will be eliminated.
• The efficiency of setting questions from one unit alone will be
normally high and the expert can work fast.
• Students will not show any interest regarding any rumours of
leakage of papers, s/he is not sure of the question paper that
s/he has to answer.
• Since seating arrangement and 4 different question papers are
distributed, mass copying will be eliminated.

42. •Printing of question paper at security press is
eliminated and thus the possible leakage of papers
from the press is avoided.
•The possibility of opening of wrong question papers is
eliminated and thus the examination schedule will not
be affected. Even if there is a problem in any of
examination centre/s, such centres will be isolated
and separate examination can be conducted.

43. DISADVANTAGES OF MAINTAINING
CONFIDENTIALITY
• The only disadvantage is that with changes in syllabus, these
changes have to be identified carefully and the banks have to
be changed meticulously.
• The main hurdle has been in the identification of subject
experts for moderation and for preparation of question banks
in the new and emerging fields like bio-technology and
aeronautical engineering. To solve this problem, experts from
various other institutions outside the state, as well as from the
affiliated colleges are being involved.

46. REFERENCES
• Jaspreet Kaur Sodhi. Comprehensive Textbook of Nursing
Education. 2017. New Delhi. Jaypee Brothers Medical Publishers (P)
Ltd. First edition. Pg. no. 242-247.
• SlideShare. Question bank preparation, validation & amp;
moderation by panel & amp; utilization.
https://www.slideshare.net/AMRITAROY26/question-bank-
preparation-validation-amp-moderation-by-panel-amp-utilization
Available from [cited 4 sep 2019]
• SlideShare. Question bank. Available from
https://www.slideshare.net/FIROZQURESHI/question-bank-
58685545 [cited 4 sep 2019]