Item Banking

Abstract

The concept of item banking has attracted considerable interest in recent years from both public and private agencies (Hiscox & Brzezinski, 1980). In fact, the military, many companies, school districts, state departments of education, and test publishing companies have prepared (or are preparing) item banks. Item banks consist of substantial numbers of items that are matched to objectives, skills, or tasks and can be used by test developers to build tests on an “as needed” basis. When a bank consists of content-valid and technically sound items, the test developer’s task of building tests is considerably easier and the quality of tests is usually higher than when test developers prepare their own test items. Item banks, especially those in which items are described by item-response model parameter estimates, offer considerable potential:

• Test developers can easily build tests to measure objectives of interest.

• Test developers, within the limits of an item bank, can produce tests with the desired number of test items per objective.

• If item banks consist of content-valid and technically sound items, test quality will usually be better than test developers could produce if they were to prepare the test items themselves.