The document discusses eliminating irrelevant barriers and unintended clues in objective test items that can undermine the validity of an assessment. Factors like complex sentences, difficult vocabulary, and unclear instructions are construct-irrelevant barriers that limit students' responses. Test items should measure the intended learning outcomes and not other irrelevant abilities. Care should be taken to avoid ambiguity, wordiness, biases and other barriers that prevent students from demonstrating their actual achievement levels. Clues within items could allow students without sufficient learning to still answer correctly, preventing the items from functioning as intended.

1. I. Eliminating Irrelevant Barriers to the Performance
II. Avoiding Unintended Clues in Objective Test Items

2.  The validity of the assessment may be
undermined by the influence of construct-
irrelevant factors or abilities that are
ancillary to the intent of the assessment.
 Ifstudents have achieved a particular
learning outcomes, we would want them to
answer correctly those test items that
measure the attainment of that learning
outcome.

3.  Factors, such as complex sentence structure,
difficult vocabulary, and unclear type of
response called for, are extraneous to the
central purpose of the assessment; hence,
they limit and modify the students’ responses
and prevent them from showing their true
levels of achievement.

4.  Possible barriers in test items and assessment
tasks:
 Ambiguous statements
 Excessive wordiness
 Difficult vocabulary
 Complex sentence structure
 Unclear instructions
 Unclear illustrative material
 Racial, ethnic, or gender bias

5.  Ways to eliminate irrelevant barriers
 Be certain that all students have the prerequisite
skills and abilities (enabling behaviors) needed to
make the response.
 Strive for items and tasks that measure
achievement of the specific learning outcomes
and not differences in ancillary abilities.
 Avoid ambiguity.
 Care should be taken to avoid any racial, ethnic,
or gender bias in preparing the test items and
performance assessment tasks.

6.  Test items should be constructed so that
students obtain the correct answer only if
they have attained the desired learning
outcome.
 However, there are factors that enable
students to respond correctly even though
they lack the necessary achievement.
 These clues lead the poor achiever to the
correct answer and thereby prevent the
items from functioning as intended.

7.  Common clues in test items
 Grammatical inconsistencies
 Verbal association
 Specific determiners (e.g. always)
 Phrasing of correct responses
 Length of correct responses
 Location of correct responses