Mandalay University of Foreign Languages

 

Department of English 

E-634 

Designing a Multiple Choice Question

Submitted by

2/Mahar-Engl-2 Ma Shwe Sin Win

Table of Contents

1. Introduction2. Anatomy of A Multiple Choice Question 3. Guidelines for Writing a Good Multiple Choice Question

3.1.Guidelines for Writing the Stem3.2.Guidelines for Building the Alternatives

4. Strengths and Weaknesses of Multiple Choice Questions5. Conclusion

1. Introduction

Multiple-choice question is

• the most common type of selected-response items

•widely used due to their versatility in assessing a range of learning objectives

•popular because of reliability and economical scoring

2. Anatomy of a Multiple Choice Question 

3. Guidelines for Writing a Good Multiple Choice Question

3.1. Guidelines for Writing the Stem

The stem

should be meaningful by itself

should not contain irrelevant materials

should be written in the simplest, clearest and unambiguous way

3. Guidelines for Writing a Good Multiple Choice

Questionshould be free of irrelevant material

should state positive

should avoid clues

should include the words common to the alternatives

should put as much of the necessary wording as possible

3.2. Guidelines for Building the Alternatives

1. There should be 3 to 4 answer options.2. All answer options should be plausible.3. Distractors should be clearly incorrect.4. “All of the Above” and “None of the Above” should not be 

answer options.5. Answer options should all be grammatically consistent with 

stem.6. Answer options should not be longer than the stem.7. Order of answer options should be logical or random.8. All the options should be listed vertically.

4.Strengths and Limitations of Multiple Choice Questions

 Strengths

1.Achievement of learning outcomes can be assessed.

2. Highly structured and clear tasks are provided.

3. A broad sample of achievement can be assessed.

4. Incorrect alternatives provide diagnostic information.

5. Scores are less influenced by guessing than true-false items.

4.Strengths and Limitations of Multiple Choice Questions

6. Scores are more reliable than subjectively scored items

7. Scoring is easy, objective, and reliable.

8. Item analysis can reveal how difficult each item was.

9. Achievement can be compared from class to class and year to year

10. Can cover a lot of materials very efficiently

4.Strengths and Limitations of Multiple

Choice Questions Limitations 1. Constructing good items is time consuming.

2. It is frequently difficult to find plausible distractors.

3. MCQ can be ineffective for assessing some types of problem solving.

4. Scores can be influenced by reading ability.

5. There is a lack of feedback on individual thought processes

4.Strengths and Limitations of Multiple Choice Questions

6. Students can read more into the question than was intended.

7. MCQs fails to test higher levels of cognitive thinking.

8. Sometimes there is more than one defensible “correct” answer.

9. They place a high degree of dependence the instructor’s writing ability.

10. MCQs do not provide an assessment of writing ability.

11. They may encourage guessing. 12. Cheating may be facilitated.

5. Conclusion 

• MCQ  were  developed  to  overcome  a  number  of  the weaknesses of the composition test

• The test writer can get directly at many of the specific skills and learnings he wishes to measure

• The examinee cannot evade difficult problems as he often can with composition