1. Multiple-Choice and Matching Exercises
Chapter 10
Multiple-Choice and Matching Exercises

2. Key Concept #1
A multiple-choice item consists of one or more introductory sentences followed by a list of two or more suggested responses.
The student must choose the correct (keyed) answer and reject the distractors.

3. Key Concept #2
Before writing a multiple choice item, consider your learning objective and design both the question and answer choices to tap both the content and the level of understanding you want to measure.

4. Varieties of Multiple-Choice Items
Most useful
Correct-answer
Best-answer
Incomplete-statement
Negative
Others
Multiple-response
Substitution
Incomplete alternative
Combined response

5. Direct Versus Indirect Assessment
Multiple-choice tests can directly assess these abilities:
to discriminate and make correct choices
to comprehend concepts, principles, generalizations
to make judgments about and choices among various courses of action
to infer and reason
to compute
to interpret new data or new information
to apply information and knowledge in structured situations.

6. Direct Versus Indirect Assessment
Multiple-choice tests can indirectly assess these abilities:
to recall information with minimal prompting
to articulate explanations and give examples
to produce and express unique or original ideas
to solve problems that are not well structured
to organize personal thoughts
to display thought processes or patterns of reasoning
to work in groups
to construct or build things

7. Key Concept #3
Multiple-choice items have many advantages, including the ability to assess a variety of learning targets efficiently.
Multiple-choice items have been criticized because if they are used to excess, students do not have a chance to express their learning in their own words and may develop a “one right answer” mentality.

8. Advantages Can be used to assess a variety of learning objectives.
Do not require students to write out and elaborate their answers.
Focus on reading and thinking.
Hard to guess the correct answer.
Distractors provide diagnostic insight into difficulties a student may be experiencing

9. Criticisms Students do not create or express their own ideas.
Poorly written multiple-choice items can be superficial, trivial, and limited to factual knowledge.
Brighter students may be penalized for not choosing a correct response.
Multiple-choice items are often based on “standardized,” “vulgarized,” or “approved” knowledge that is often decontextualized.
Exclusive use of multiple-choice testing for important or high-stakes assessments may shape education in undesirable ways.

10. Key Concept #4
Follow item-writing guidelines to create high-quality multiple-choice items.

11. General Guidelines Focus items to assess specific learning objectives.
Each item should be independent of the others.

12. General Guidelines
The stem should be a question or problem to be solved.
Direct question or incomplete sentence
Students should easily understand the intent
Control vocabulary and sentence structure
Avoid “window dressing” that hints at application
Avoid negative wording (“which does NOT”)
Assess knowledge of definitions by including the definition in the alternatives, not the stem

13. General Guidelines Write a concise, correct alternative.
Generally, only one answer should be best or correct
Competent authorities should agree on the best alternative.
The alternative should be a grammatically correct response to the stem.
Avoid textbookish, stereotyped phrasing.

14. General Guidelines Write distractors that are plausible.
Use functional alternatives to attract students who lack the degree of knowledge you expect.
Adjust the degree of homogeneity to control the difficulty of an item.
Avoid overlapping alternatives.
Use consistent, correct punctuation and grammar.
Be sure distractors are not TOO plausible (i.e., negatively discriminating).
Sometimes distractors can be used for diagnostic purposes.

15. General Guidelines Edit the item to remove irrelevant clues.
Grammatical clues (singular/plural, a/an)
Soundalike words (“clang associations”)
Technical and unfamiliar wording

16. General Guidelines for Particular Items
Avoid a collection of true/false alternatives.
Avoid “none of the above” in most cases.
Avoid “all of the above.”
Ensure that all alternatives are about the same length.

17. General Guidelines to Consider for the Entire Assessment
Avoid technical and unfamiliar wording.
Across the test, ensure that the correct alternatives do not follow a clear pattern.
Do not require students to write out their answers.

18. Key Concept #5
Alternative varieties of multiple-choice items include greater-less-same, best-answer, experiment-interpretation, and statement-and-comment items.

19. Greater-Less-Same Items
Used to assess qualitative, quantitative, or temporal relationships between two concepts.
Directions: The numbered items below contain pairs of statements. Compare the two members of each pair. If the thing described on the left is greater than the thing described on the right, circle the word “greater”; if the left is less than the right, circle “less”; and if the left and the right are essentially the same, circle “same.”

20. Greater-Less-Same Items
Can be used to assess higher-level thinking (e.g., deduce a relationship).
Limited to relationships among pairs of concepts.

21. Best-Answer Items Require relatively fine distinctions
and so assess relatively high-order verbal reasoning skills.
This may be too challenging for some students.
Can be difficult to write.
“Best answer” may differ across teacher or class.

22. Experiment-Interpretation Items
Billy and Jesse were walking through an empty lot near their home. Billy picked up a whitish rock. “Look,” he said, “I found a limestone rock. I know it is a limestone rock because I found a rock last year that has the same color, and it was limestone.”
Jesse said, “Just because it looks the same it doesn’t have to be the same.”
Which of the following explanations best supports Jesse’s point of view? …

23. Experiment-Interpretation Items
Used to assess a student’s ability to evaluate explanations, interpretations, and inferences from data.
Moves teaching away from facts toward active application of knowledge.
Can be challenging to write.
Sometimes include a request to justify the answer choice.
Offers information about student thinking.
Can be hard to score.

24. Statement-and-Comment Items
Assesses a student’s ability to evaluate interpretations of a given statement.
Given a quote/passage, student selects the best meaning of the theme from among the alternatives.
Can be presented as a short-answer item (student writes theme).

25. Key Concept #6
A matching exercise presents a student with three things:
directions for matching
a list of premises
a list of responses

26. Key Concept #7
An advantage of matching exercises is their ability to assess student understanding of relationships.
Criticisms include the fact that matching exercises are often used to test rote memorization, because these are the easiest kind of matching exercises to write.

27. Key Concept #8
Follow item-writing guidelines to create high-quality matching exercises.

28. Guidelines for Creating Matching Items
Items should assess an important outcome and fit with your assessment plan.
Make clear on what basis students should match premises and responses.
Keep the exercise short.
Premises and responses should be homogeneous.
Responses should all be plausible for each premise.

29. Guidelines for Creating Matching Items
Avoid “perfect matching.”
Use longer phrases for premises and shorter ones for responses.
Arrange the response list in a logical order.
Identify premises with numbers and responses with letters.

30. Key Concept #9
Alternative varieties of matching exercises include master-list and tabular formats.

31. Masterlist (Keylist) Items
Best used to assess a student’s understanding of concepts and ability to analyze or recognize an appropriate interpretation.
Three parts:
directions to students
masterlist of options
list or set of stems

32. Masterlist (Keylist) Items
Directions: Read each numbered statement and decide which U.S. constitutional principle it illustrates. Mark your answer:
A — if the action illustrates the principle of government by the consent of the governed.
B — if the action illustrates the principle of government in which the majority rules….
___ 1. A congressional representative, voted for a tax bill that was unpopular in his state. In the next election he was not re-elected….

33. Tabular (Matrix) Items
Used to assess whether students can pull together facts and ideas into an organized format such as a table.
Directions: Match the names, political parties, famous firsts, and important events in the columns with the dates in the table below. Write the letter in the proper column in the table. You may use a letter once, more than once, or not at all in any cell in the table.

34. Tabular (Matrix) Items
Efficient and easy to create for recall of basic factual information
Scoring can be challenging
each numbered row as completely correct or incorrect
each row according to the number of correct elements