JTA Blueprint Preview Guide
1. Overview
The main objective of a job analysis for a certification exam is to create a job-related exam blueprint. An exam blueprint is a weighted outline of the content that the exam should cover. A blueprint based on a job analysis is presumed to be job-related and thus defensible. And adhering to an exam blueprint is essential to demonstrating exam validity.
The final JTA step involves previewing the initial draft blueprint and, if everything looks good, publishing the JTA. This allows a blueprint to be created for further polishing and approval to enable item writing and exam creation.
- Tip: A valid blueprint is a blueprint that subject matter experts agree is an effective way to organize the content and that has appropriate weights. Most blueprints need additional organization in the next step.
2. Graphical Representation
The right side of the screen shows a graphical representation of the initial draft blueprint topics and weights, either a donut chart or a bar graph. Controls on the right side allow the label font size to be increased or decreased, the chart type to be toggled between donut and bar, and the image to be downloaded. Each topic is shown with a percent weight. Most blueprints require organization into a hierarchy with written descriptions. This is done in the next step.
- The default algorithm for computing the weights is described in Raymond (2002) and widely used in practice: The average criticalities of the tasks of each domain are summed. The domain sums are divided by the sum across all domains. Thus, weights are the proportion of summed task criticality for each domain. Non-critical tasks are ignored in this calculation and any domain without a single critical task is excluded from the initial draft blueprint.
Tips:
- You should make a permanent record of all details and the analysis.
- Although the JTA previews the initial draft blueprint, the user must create a new blueprint from this published JTA. Creating a blueprint requires the user to specify various parameters that will affect the item assignments, forms, etc. This blueprint can then be organized into a hierarchy and written descriptions can be added.
3. Publishing the JTA
- The final action of a JTA is to click “Publish JTA” on the blueprint preview tab. This makes the JTA information available when creating a new blueprint.
- Next steps
The next step after publishing the JTA is to create a new blueprint from this JTA and finalize it.
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