Processing of Items

First, let's consider the processing of items after a test has been delivered. Most terms used here contain the word 'response', because it’s the responses which the test candidate has submitted for each item which will be processed.

In the first item in George's assessment about the capital of Myanmar, Melanie has selected the option 'Dhaka'. In other words, the response she has submitted is 'Dhaka'. (In reality, this is a simplified view of the response, as these are constructed in a more complex way for choice interactions, but this analysis will suffice here.)

Melanie's response to the first question

During Response Submission, her answer is mapped onto the value of the Response Variable - which is the placeholder for the response. So, after Response Submission, the associated value for the response variable relating to the Item asking for the Capital of Myanmar has now been set to 'Dhaka'.

During Response Processing, Melanie’s answer is processed. This takes place using the Response Declaration, which specifies, amongst other information, the scoring method to be used, in the form of the Response Processing Rules. The values for the (Item) Outcome Variables will be computed using these rules. You can find more information on scoring rules in the section on Scoring in the User Guide. Here, it is enough to say that George has opted for a simple scoring method which awards one mark for each correctly answered item in his assessment. To use this method, the property ‘Correct Response’ in the Response Variable needs to be set as it stores the correct answer to the question.

In George’s assessment, the correct choice in the Myanmar item would have been 'Naypyitaw', as you can see in the 'Correct Response' property of the lesson Response Variable above.

Correct Response' property of Response Variable is assigned

Melanie’s response, now stored in the value of this Response Variable, is matched onto 'Correct Response' during Response Processing, i.e. 'Dhaka' is matched onto 'Naypyitaw'. After the processing of this single item, Melanie has no marks as she answered the question incorrectly. This information is stored in an Item Outcome Variable as SCORE=0.