Assessment terms beginning with I

This is a measurement glossary, not a general HR glossary. It covers the vocabulary that appears the moment you open a score report or challenge a vendor's claim — reliability, validity, norms, cut scores, item statistics and fairness analysis — because that is the vocabulary buyers are handed without explanation and the one that decides whether a number can carry a decision.

• Item analysis

  Also called Classical item statistics

  Item analysis is the statistical review of how each question in a test performed. Two numbers carry most of it: difficulty, the proportion of candidates who answered correctly, and discrimination, the correlation between getting that question right and scoring well on the test overall. Weak items are revised or retired on this evidence.

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• Item response theory

  Also called IRT, Latent trait theory

  Item response theory models the probability of a given answer as a function of the candidate's underlying ability and the question's own parameters — usually difficulty, discrimination and, for multiple choice, guessing. Because ability and item difficulty are placed on the same scale, scores from different sets of questions remain comparable.

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