How do you all decide how hard a question or passage is?

Claire Z.

Hi there, I know you all rank how hard questions or passages are on a five-point scale. I figured you do it based on what percentage of people got a certain question wrong.

I just finished a preptest (66) and I'm particularly interested now. You ranked game 1 four out of five in difficulty, but said it should take five minutes to complete. Game 2 got 10 minutes target time, but was ranked three out of four in difficulty.

Those are just examples. I'm not looking for specific feedback about preptest 66. I was just curious how you decide how hard questions are, or how long we should spend on them.

Thanks!