Pamela Wilson
BACKGROUND: High-quality National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX) items are essential for preparing nursing students for licensure, yet nurse educators lack standardized tools for evaluating both traditional and clinical judgment item formats. PROBLEM: Without a structured evaluation framework, item quality concerns across content, construction, and cognitive demand go unidentified, compromising examination validity and accurate evaluation of student cognitive abilities. APPROACH: The NCLEX Item Evaluation Rubric (NIER) was developed through an iterative process grounded in established item writing literature. OUTCOMES: In a preliminary proof of concept, 3 raters evaluated 3 artificial intelligence-generated bowtie items using the NIER. The rubric successfully differentiated item quality across all 10 domains, identifying consistent strengths and deficiencies. Interrater exact agreement was 57% overall, with 81% of ratings falling within 2 scoring points. CONCLUSIONS: The NIER provides nurse educators with a practical, standardized framework for evaluating NCLEX items.