ITEM ANALYSIS OF LEARNING POTENTIAL TESTS AS A WAY OF INCREASING QUALITY OF UNIVERSITY ADMISSION PROCESS

Admissions to universities are the situations of high-stakes testing. What we need, are good tests, which means objective, valid and reliable tests. The test, however, is only as good as are his items. The paper presents the item analysis of learning potential tests used at the Philosophical Faculty of Palacky University in Olomouc based on classical test theory (difficulty, sensitivity, internal consistency). The data consists of 14 versions of admission tests (each contains 50 items), i.e. total of 700 items divided into five sections (social science knowledge, verbal skills, critical thinking, spatial ability, logical and analytical thinking). The total of 3836 candidates underwent these tests in the year 2014. The results show that there are about 34 % of imperfect items, despite choosing relatively soft criteria. If these items were discarded, psychometric indicators of tests have improved. It is also important to judge each item qualitatively, some items can be repaired. Anyway learning potential tests should always be piloted, despite the difficulty of this process.