What is Test ?

What is Test ?

A procedure intended to establish the quality, performance, or reliability of something, especially before it is taken into widespread use. A test or examination is an assessment intended to measure a test-taker's knowledge, skill, aptitude, physical fitness, or classification in many other topics

According to Ben(1953)

“A test is an organised sucession of stimuli designed to measure quantitatively or to evaluate qualitatively some mental process,trait or characterstics.”

Ø  Test commonly refers to a set of items or questions under specific conditions.

Ø  Atest is a deviceor technique used to measure the performance ,skill level,or knowledge of a learner on a specific subject matter.

Ø  A test is a specific tool or procedureused to draw out or elicit a response from the students to get infiormation.

Characteristics of a good test

Test preparation activities which promote quality, long-term learning are appropriate, even essential. Good test-taking skills and appropriate content learning can reduce the likelihood that extraneous factors will influence students’ test scores. The various characteristics of a good test are:

v  It can be tried out and selected on the basis of its difficulty level and discriminating power.

v  Directly related to the educational objectives.

v  It should possess description of measure behavior in realistic and practical terms.

v  Contains a sufficient number of test items for each measured behavior; concerned with important and useful matter; comprehensive, brief, precise and clear.

v  It should be divided into different knowledge and skills according to behavior to be measured.

v  Standardized the items and made instructions clear so that different users can utilize it.

v  Rules and norms have to be developed so that various age groups can use at various levels.

v  It provides equivalent and comparable forms of the test.

v  A test manual has to be prepared, which can act as a guide for administering and scoring.

USES OF TESTS

v  It helps to get a better understanding of the needs an abilities of the pupils.

v  It helps to discover the type of learning experiences that will achieve the objectives with best possible results.

v  It helps to evaluate the extent to which the objectives of education are being achieved

v  To evaluate, to revise and to improve the curriculum in the light of these results.

v  The teacher will able to discover backward children and providing proper remedial instruction for their betterment.

v  The teacher will able to determine and diagnose the weakness of the students in various subjects.

v  It helps the parents in recognizing the strength and weakness of their children.

v  By studying the results of test the teacher will able to determine whether or not the students are working at their maximum capacity.

v  Items, units or skills, which are understood by a majority of students, car1 be located and teaching can be adjusted to the situation.

v  The causes for the difficulty in certain items can be found out, for which remedial measures can be taken.

v  It can assist the pupil in locating one's weakness and so they can be corrected with maximurn ease and economy.

v  It can lead to motivation and interest can generate cooperation in future teaching learning situation.

v  It can indicate the effectiveness of specific methods of teaching in dealing with specific teaching situations.