Multiple-Choice (MC) items have many advantages that make them widely used and highly regarded. They also have disadvantages, some of which can be reduced by careful attention to good item-writing and item analysis practice.

Advantages of Multiple-Choice Items

1. Versatility -- MC items are adaptable to the measurement of a wide variety of learning outcomes including reasoning, making inferences, solving problems, exercising judgment and demonstrating knowledge of facts through interpretation and analysis of information.

2. Efficiency -- Because of the large number of items that can be posed in a given length of time, MC items permit wide sampling and broad coverage of the content domain.

3. Scoring accuracy and economy -- Expert agreement on the correct answer to MC items is easy to obtain, and machine or clerical assistants can economically apply scoring keys.

4. Reliability -- Consistency in scoring and wide sampling of content provide test results that can be generalized to the domain of interest. < /p>

5. Diagnosis -- Patterns of incorrect responses can provide diagnostic information about the learning of individual students or groups.

6. Control of difficulty -- The level of difficulty of a test can be increased or decreased by adjusting the degree of similarity among the options to the items.

7. Reduction of guessing -- In comparison with two-choice (e.g., true-false) tests, guessing is reduced with MC items.

8. Freedom from response sets -- MC items are relatively uninfluenced by response sets, such as a tendency to answer "true."

9. Amenable to item analysis -- Item analysis have means by which they can be improved.

1. Multiple-choice tests are difficult and time consuming to write. The construction of plausible distracters is especially difficult. The quality of the test is therefore dependent on the item-writing skill of the instructor.

2. There is a tendency to write items requiring only factual knowledge rather than higher-level skills and understandings.

3. Performance on MC items can be influenced by student characteristics unrelated to the subject of measurement, such as reading ability, deductive reasoning, the use of context clues and risk-taking.

4. MC items are subject to clueing.

5. MC items do not measure ability to organize and express ideas.

1. Write items that deal with significant facts or concepts, not trivial questions or overly specific details.

2. Write items that have a definite answer. Students may be asked to select either the correct answer or the best answer. The former instruction is usually more suitable for items dealing with factual knowledge, where the correct answer is a matter of record. For items dealing with interpretation, understanding, or inference, instruction to select the best answer is usually preferred.

3. Communicate clearly. The wording and presentation of the items should not present obstacles to the students' ability to demonstrate what they know. The item should be written in clear language with vocabulary, other than the vocabulary being tested, that is as simple and precise as possible.

4. Don't give away the answer by including irrelevant cues in the item.

5. Don't write items that require skills or knowledge irrelevant to what you are trying to measure.

6. Don't use language that may be offensive to some groups.

7. Have items reviewed by knowledgeable persons other than the composer of the question if possible.

1. Write an item as either a direct question (Who was the first President of the United States?) or an incomplete statement (The first President of the United States was ________). Often one form or the other will produce simpler and clearer wording. If not, the question form may be easier for the writer and more straightforward for the student.

2. Present a single, complete problem or question in the stem. Most of the reading should be in the stem.

3. Eliminate excess wording; include only what is necessary to present the problem or question.

4. Include in the stem all the information needed to arrive at an unambiguous answer to the item.

5. Include in the stem any words that would be repeated in each option.

6. Use an introductory sentence for the item if it seems useful. Two sentences may express the problem more clearly than one.

7. Write completion items with the blank at the end rather than the beginning or middle of the sentence.

8. Avoid the use of negative wording in items. If negatives are necessary, emphasize them with bolding, underlining or capitalization. Do not use negatives in either the stem or the response because double negatives can be confusing.

9. Do not write items that require a series of true-false answers, i.e., questions of the form: "Which of the following is true?"

10. Make sure that items are independent. The information in one item should not supply the answer to another.

11. To test understanding and interpretation rather than factual knowledge, ask the questions "How?" and "Why?" rather than "Who?" and "When".

12. Consider variations on the simple MC format:

    1. Present material to be interpreted--such as a reading passage, a table, a graph, and a map--and base several items on it (being careful about guideline 10, above).

    2. Use the same set of response options for several items, presenting the options first, in effect creating a small matching task.

    3. Present items in analogy form: a is to b as 1 is to _____.

1. Be sure there is one best response to the item. Options must be mutually exclusive and not overlap.

2. Make the length of the options comparable. Avoid over qualifying the keyed response.

3. Make the options parallel in form.

4. Make all options grammatically consistent with the stem.

5. Don't use absolute language, such as "never" and "always" as a means of making options incorrect.

6. Don't repeat key words from the stem in the keyed option.

7. Don't use stereotyped language that may cue the keyed option.

8. Make the distracters plausible and equally attractive to students who do not know the correct response.

9. Use 3-5 options. Four or five options are desirable to reduce guessing, but a good item with three options can be useful. Do not discard an item with only three good options or add implausible options, but make the number of options consistent.

10. List the options in a logical order if there is one.

11. Present the options in a list format rather than in a paragraph with the stem.

12. Distribute the correct option randomly among the option positions.

13. Don't make the options overly wordy or confusing.

14. Don't use "All of the above" as an option. "None of the above" should not be used as an option with "best answer" items but can be used effectively with computational items.

15. Sometimes it may be easier to write correct than incorrect options for an item. It is legitimate to ask students to choose the option that is not correct, but heed the caveats regarding negatives in item stem guideline 8, above.

16. It can be helpful to define the class of things to which the correct answer belongs, and then write distracters based on members of that class.

17. Consider as distracters responses that are correct but do not answer the question posed by the stem.

18. Obtain distracters from responses of students to items administered in completion or short answer form.