Are undergraduate examinees' perceptions of item difficulty related to item characteristics?

Abstract

The present study assessed whether selected item characteristics--difficulty for the group, corrected item-total correlation, cognitive level, and difficulty for the examinee--relate to judgment of item difficulty. Undergraduate students in two classes (ns = 76, 43) identified what they believed were the five easiest and five most difficult items on a multiple-choice test. Statistically significant correlations were observed for difficulty for the group and the frequency that items were chosen as easy as well as with frequency of items chosen as difficult. Students performed significantly better on items they chose as easy than those chosen as difficult. Items chosen as easy more often called for simple, factual recall than did items chosen as difficult.