Flow chart of test construction

Item development

Item development is a procedure to structure test items in line with the content specifications (evaluation items produced through a job analysis). Since an item bank needs to have a certain multiple of additional items, it is necessary to replenish the bank when there are insufficient items as may occur as a result of deleting some items from test construction and item screening. Therefore, it is required to continuously develop items for evaluating occupational performance according to content specifications.

Item review

Item review is a procedure to produce high-quality test items by reviewing newly developed items in the present year and used items from various points of view. This procedure reviews whether or not the items are essential that an examinee should be knowledgable of to perform a job, whether they are suitable as items on the national examination, and whether they are items complying with the items writing principles using a checklist. Items selected through review are to be imported in item bank and managed.

Management of the item bank

The item bank is a place where candidate questions can be stored. The item bank contains multiple of actual test items which will be structured to form an examination. All processes of the item bank are computerized and effectively and systematically managed, from items development stage to items review and test construction stage.

Test construction

Test construction is to structure a set of suitable test items for each health professionals using the item bank.
To achieve the ultimate goal of securing validity of the test based on relevance and reliability, an examination is constructed with contents required in performing tasks for an health professionals through a job analysis as well as academic review.
In order to enhance the reliability of the korea health personnel examination, there should be no errors in the test items.
Once test developers for each subjects have finished test construction at work, reviewers will review whether the overall difficulty is suitable, whether there are any duplicated test items within a subject, whether an item is similar to that of a used item, and whether there have been any errors in the structuring of test items.
After this, they will finalize the test items.

Analysis and evaluation of the item bank

Item analysis is carried out to analyze the reliability of each item and is used to enhance the validity of the item and of the overall examination. Item analysis is divided into quantitative item analysis based on statistical numbers and qualitative item analysis wherein the judgment of specialists is used to the best advantage. The KHPLEI continues to make efforts to improve evaluation standards and item quality of the national examination by utilizing reliability analysis results as basic data in item development and test construction.