NR 537 Week 5 Item Analysis Write-Up Example

Course	NR 537 Assessment and Evaluation in Education
Week	5
Paper type	Item analysis write-up
Length	About 1,110 words, 3 pages
Format	APA 7 student paper
School	Chamberlain University
Program	MSN, Nurse Educator
Updated	September 2026

Free sample paper for NR 537 Week 5

Item Analysis Write-Up: Reading the Answer Pattern of a Sixty-Item Maternal-Newborn Midterm Backward and Sorting Nine Flagged Questions Into Keep, Revise or Retire, With the Reason Stated for Every Decision

Student Name

College of Nursing, Chamberlain University

NR 537: Assessment and Evaluation in Education

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

What this page is doingThe title presents item analysis as a set of decisions with reasons, because statistics that are computed and not acted on leave the examination unchanged. Student APA 7 title page.

Purpose

A test is not finished when the grades go out. This write-up analyzes the 60-item midterm examination in our third-year maternal-newborn course, taken by 64 students, and decides what happens to each item that the analysis flags. Evaluation texts for nurse educators describe item analysis as the step that turns an examination from a one-time measurement into a bank of items that improves each year (Oermann & Gaberson, 2019). The analysis reads the answer pattern backward: from how students answered each item to what the item was actually measuring.

The Examination as a Whole

The mean score was 71.4%, with scores ranging from 48% to 93%. The reliability coefficient, Kuder-Richardson formula 20, was 0.78, which is acceptable for a classroom examination of this length and is higher than last year's 0.71. Reliability reflects how consistently the items rank students, and a flawed item lowers it by adding noise. Removing the three items retired below would raise the coefficient to an estimated 0.80.

Three statistics were calculated for each item. Difficulty is the proportion of students who answered correctly. Discrimination compares the highest-scoring 27% of students with the lowest-scoring 27%, subtracting the share correct in the lower group from the share correct in the upper group; a positive value means stronger students did better on the item. The point-biserial correlation measures the same relationship using all students. For each distractor, the proportion of students choosing it was recorded. Any distractor attracting under 5% of the class counted as nonfunctional, following the convention used in a study of distractor functioning in nursing and health examinations (Tarrant et al., 2009).

Flagging Rules

An item was flagged if it met any of five rules: difficulty above 0.90, since almost everyone answered correctly; difficulty below 0.30; discrimination below 0.20; a negative discrimination or point-biserial, meaning weaker students did better than stronger ones; or a distractor that no student chose. Nine items were flagged. Flags do not decide an item's fate. They identify items that need a person to read the item again and ask why the numbers look the way they do.

The Flagged Items

Table 1 summarizes the nine flagged items and the decision for each.

Table 1

Flagged Items and Decisions

Item	Content	Difficulty	Discrimination	Distractor pattern	Decision
4	Normal fetal heart rate range	0.97	0.05	Two distractors chosen by no one	Keep, as a foundational item; replace two distractors
11	Magnesium toxicity, first action	0.62	0.48	Calcium gluconate chosen by 31%	Keep; functioning well despite flag for a nonfunctional distractor
17	Rh immune globulin timing	0.28	0.12	Key and one distractor split nearly evenly	Revise: stem wording found ambiguous
23	Breastfeeding latch assessment	0.81	-0.08	Weaker students chose key more often	Retire: key relied on a textbook phrase
29	Postpartum hemorrhage, first action	0.44	0.39	Increase oxytocin chosen by 38%; one distractor unused	Keep; teach the distinction in class
35	Newborn thermoregulation	0.94	0.09	Radiant warmer distractor chosen by 4%	Revise one distractor
41	Preterm labor medication	0.22	0.02	Most chose one distractor	Retire: key found to reflect outdated practice
48	Cultural practices after birth	0.35	0.16	Options overlapped	Revise: rewrite options
56	Postpartum depression screening	0.78	-0.11	Strong students chose a distractor	Retire: distractor defensible

Reasons for Keeping

Items 4, 11 and 29 are kept. Item 4 was very easy, which explains its low discrimination; almost everyone knows the normal fetal heart rate range. It stays because the fact is foundational, but its two unused distractors will be replaced with values students might plausibly confuse. Item 11 was flagged only because one distractor was chosen by no one; its discrimination of 0.48 is excellent, and the calcium gluconate distractor attracted 31% of students, showing a real misconception. Item 29 was flagged for an unused distractor, which will be replaced, but it attracted 38% to the oxytocin distractor, which is exactly the confusion the item was written to detect. Keeping these items is a teaching decision as much as a measurement one: they show where students are confused.

Reasons for Revising

Items 17, 35 and 48 are revised. In item 17, students split nearly evenly between the key and one distractor. On rereading, the stem did not state whether the newborn's blood type was known, which made the distractor defensible. The stem will state it. In item 35, one distractor was barely chosen; it will be replaced with a more plausible option. In item 48, two options described overlapping practices, so students who knew the content could not choose between them. The options will be rewritten to be mutually exclusive, following the guideline that options should not overlap (Haladyna et al., 2002).

Reasons for Retiring

Items 23, 41 and 56 are retired. Item 23 had negative discrimination: weaker students chose the key more often than stronger ones. The key repeated a phrase from the textbook, which students who had memorized the chapter recognized, while stronger students chose an option that described a good latch in their own clinical terms and was also correct. Item 41 was very difficult and did not discriminate, and review showed that its key reflected a medication practice that has since changed, so students who knew current practice chose the distractor. Item 56 also had negative discrimination; its most popular distractor was a defensible screening approach. All three items were scored as correct for every student, which raised the mean by about 2 percentage points, and none will be reused.

What the Analysis Changes

The analysis changes the examination, the item bank and the teaching. Three items will not be used again, three will be revised before reuse and three will be kept with minor changes. In class, the distinction between stopping magnesium and giving calcium gluconate, and between fundal massage and increasing oxytocin, will get more time, because two well-performing items showed that about a third of students confuse them. The retirements also show a pattern: two of three retired items were flawed in ways that penalized stronger students, which is consistent with research showing that item-writing flaws tend to disadvantage high achievers (Tarrant & Ware, 2008). Future items will be reviewed for defensible distractors before use, not only after.

What this page is doingEvery flagged item receives a decision and a reason drawn from rereading the item, not from the statistics alone, and the analysis ends with changes to the item bank and to teaching.

References

Haladyna, T. M., Downing, S. M., & Rodriguez, M. C. (2002). A review of multiple-choice item-writing guidelines for classroom assessment. Applied Measurement in Education, 15(3), 309-333. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15324818AME1503_5

Oermann, M. H., & Gaberson, K. B. (2019). Evaluation and testing in nursing education (6th ed.). Springer Publishing.

Tarrant, M., & Ware, J. (2008). Impact of item-writing flaws in multiple-choice questions on student achievement in high-stakes nursing assessments. Medical Education, 42(2), 198-206. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2923.2007.02957.x

Tarrant, M., Ware, J., & Mohammed, A. M. (2009). An assessment of functioning and non-functioning distractors in multiple-choice questions: A descriptive analysis. BMC Medical Education, 9, Article 40. https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6920-9-40

The Chamberlain NR 537 Week 5 instructions

Analyzing a finished test is the work this week. Prompts generally ask you to interpret item statistics for an examination, identify problematic items and recommend actions. Report overall statistics such as the mean and a reliability coefficient, and explain what they mean. Define the item statistics you use. Set flagging rules in advance, then reread every flagged item before deciding, since statistics show that something is wrong but not what. Sort items into keep, revise or retire, with a reason for each. Note what each well-performing item reveals about student misconceptions. Say how scoring was adjusted for retired items. Cite measurement sources in APA 7 and summarize flagged items in a table.

Inside the NR 537 Week 5 example

The write-up opens with its purpose and the idea of reading the answer pattern backward. The examination as a whole is described through its mean, range and reliability, with an estimate of reliability after retirements. Definitions of the three item statistics and the nonfunctional distractor threshold follow. Five flagging rules are stated. Table 1 lists nine items with statistics, distractor patterns and decisions. Three sections give the reasons for keeping, revising and retiring, each tied to rereading the item: ambiguous stems, overlapping options, outdated keys and defensible distractors. The final section describes changes to the bank and to teaching, and links the retirements to research on flawed items.

NR 537 Week 5 rubric: what full points look like

Item analysis grading typically weighs accurate interpretation of statistics, sound criteria for identifying problematic items, well-reasoned decisions about each item, attention to distractors and implications for teaching. Graders favor write-ups in which decisions rest on rereading items, not on numbers alone. Explaining why a flagged item is kept shows judgment as much as retiring one. Linking item results to student misconceptions and teaching changes demonstrates that analysis serves learning. Correct definitions and calculations support credibility. Describing how retired items were scored shows fairness to students. A clear table and citations to measurement sources complete the evaluation. Stating how the analysis will shape next year's examination completes the strongest write-ups.

NR 537 Week 5 help from the desk

Write-ups often stop at a list of statistics with no decisions. Say what happens to each flagged item and why. Another is retiring every item with a low discrimination index, including easy foundational items that are supposed to be answered by nearly everyone. Read before deciding. Students also ignore distractors, which often reveal the most about misconceptions. Report them. Avoid overinterpreting results from a small class. Do not forget to adjust scores fairly when retiring items. Check each flagged item's key against current practice. Finally, carry the findings into teaching, since an item that reveals a common confusion is telling you what to teach next year. Record every decision in the item bank so the next writer knows why an item changed.

Get a NR 537 Week 5 example written to your instructions

Send the statistics your section supplied, the items themselves and the assignment instructions, and a custom NR 537 Week 5 write-up is built on those figures and returned inside 24-48h, with the first one free. Where your section provides a practice data set rather than live results, that works equally well, since the reasoning is what the rubric reads.

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NR 537 Week 5 questions, answered

What if my section gives us the statistics rather than a real class?

That is common and it changes nothing about the assignment. The figures are raw material; the marks live in the reading of them and in the repair that follows. A supplied data set is often cleaner for the purpose, because it usually contains one deliberately miskeyed question and one dead distractor, and finding both is the check the week is running.

Do the numbers themselves need to be calculated by hand?

Sections differ. Some publish the indices already computed and want only the interpretation, others expect the arithmetic shown for a small set. The example includes whichever your instructions ask for. What never varies is that a figure quoted without a reading of it earns nothing, and that every repair has to be traceable to a specific phrase in the item.

Can an item be kept even though it looks bad?

It can be, and the entry that defends keeping it usually earns more than the ones that recommend changes. An item can look weak because the class never learned the content, because the group was small, or because it sat late in a timed test. Naming the alternative explanation before recommending a change is what separates analysis from mechanical flagging.

Where can I find a free NR 537 Week 5 sample paper?

The nine-item keep, revise or retire write-up above is the whole NR 537 Week 5 sample, reproduced here without restriction. If you have statistics from your own examination, send them to us and an analysis that decides each flagged item can be written.

Should flagged items always be removed in NR 537?

No. Flags identify items to reread, not items to discard. The sample keeps three flagged items because their statistics reflect easy foundational content or revealing distractors, and retires only those with flawed keys or defensible distractors.