The Effect of Sequential Cues of Item Contexts in Science Assessment

Contextualized items have been widely used in science testing. Despite common use of item contexts, how the influence of a chosen context on the reliability and validity of the score inferences remains unclear. We focused on sequential cues of contextual information, referring to the order of events or descriptions presented in item contexts. We hypothesized that the sequence of information presented should allow students to understand the logic of an item. We proposed an approach for capturing information on three dimensions of sequential cues: sequence of events, sequence of intention and action, and sequence of cause and effect. We found that the addition of contexts increased the item difficulty. There was limited evidence that items with intention did not differ in item difficulty from those without intention. Findings for the other two dimensions was inconclusive because of the low frequency of certain item categories.