B. Developing Multiple-Choice Questions

        Multiple-choice questions are selection-type items. Students are given three or more possible answers and are asked to choose the correct answer or the "best" answer. The item begins with an item stem, followed by alternatives (the correct answer and distractors). Multiple-choice questions can be used to measure knowledge recall as well as higher order thinking. They are appropriate for use with objectives that call for the students to do such tasks as recognize, distinguish between, select, estimate, infer, predict, relate, categorize.

        Some of the most thorough work regarding multiple-choice questions has been done by Thomas Haladyna (1999). He presents four types of content (facts, concepts, principles, and procedures) and five types of cognitive behaviors (recalling, understanding, predicting, evaluating, and problem solving). While multiple-choice questions can be used to measure all of these, he suggests the context-dependent item set (a set of multiple-choice questions based on new content that is presented as part of the assessment, such as a paragraph, graphic display, etc.) or constructed response (short answer, completion, or essay questions) as more appropriate for critical thinking and problem solving than independent multiple-choice questions.

        Multiple-choice items can be scored easily and quickly. They can be scored by machine and are frequently used for standardized tests. It is possible to sample a lot of content with multiple-choice items. Although multiple-choice tests are sometimes called "multiple guess" tests, there is less chance of guessing the correct answer than with true-false questions. Higher-order thinking can be assessed with multiple-choice items. The student can be asked to apply a rule or principle (example 1 below), to show understanding of cause and effect (example 2), or to identify the reasoning behind a particular choice of action (example 3).

        Although a multiple-choice test may be referred to as an "objective test," no test is truly objective. The instructor or someone else subjectively determines what content is included in the test, the amount of emphasis placed on various topics, and the type(s) of questions used. Tests containing selection type questions (true-false, multiple-choice, matching, etc.), however, can be scored objectively because the scorer is not called upon to use his or her judgment when scoring the questions. Also, the questions can be scored fairly quickly using an answer key or machine scoring if it is available.

        While students may be able to guess or use the process of elimination, questions of this type require the students to make more complex distinctions than if each item were written as a true-false statement. Instead of choosing between two options in example 4a, there are more options and less chance of guessing correctly in example 4b.

        Another consideration is trying to insure that one question or its distractors do not provide clues to the answer of another question.

        Multiple-choice questions may not be as good for problem-solving (math) as completion/short answer items, but if students must take standardized tests in multiple-choice format, the students need some experience with this format.

        Reading level and reading speed of the students must be considered when constructing the items. If the language is too difficult or if there are slow readers among the students, some may earn lower scores because they do not finish, rather than because they do not know the material. Each multiple-choice question typically involves more reading than a true-false, short answer or completion question.

        "Best" answer items (measuring understanding, application, and interpretation) are usually more difficult for the students than "correct" answer items. Example 6 (below) asks the student to determine the "MOST IMPORTANT" consideration. This presupposes that your instruction has included activities in which students are called upon to develop skills of comparing and evaluating information. However, if the students have been instructed that a particular purpose is the most important one, the question measures only knowledge or recall of information.

        If we were seeking the "best" answer, one or more of our distractors could fit all the categories in the stem but to a lesser degree than the deer. This also increases the difficulty of the question because we have made the alternatives more homogeneous.