Completion-Test Items

These require students to supply an important word, number, or phrase to complete a

statement. Blanks are provided to be filled in by the student. While these questions are less
susceptible to guessing, the responses could vary to greatly that subjectivity could enter into the
scoring. Another drawback is that completion items are more suited to measuring lower-level
than higher-level performances.
1. Prepare a scoring key that contains all acceptable answers for each item.
2. Call for answers that can be scored objectively. Prefer single words or short phrases. Check your
items by posing this question: Can someone with no competency in the subject score the items
objectively by relying solely on the answer key?
3. Beware of open questions that invite unexpected but reasonable answers.
4. Eliminate giveaways.
a. Make all the blanks an equal length
b. Avoid grammatical clues such as “an.”
5. Place the blanks near the end of the statement. Try to present a complete or nearly complete
statement before calling for a response.
6. Limit the number of blanks to one or two per item. Statements with too many blanks waste time as
students figure out what is being asked.
7. If a numerical answer is called for, indicate the units in which it is to be expressed.

True-False Items
1. Base the item on a single idea.
2. Write items that test an important idea
3. Avoid lifting statements right from the textbook.
4. Make the questions a brief as possible
5. Write clearly true or clearly false statements. Write them in pairs: one “true” and one “false” version
and choose one to keep balance on the test.
6. Eliminate giveaways:
 Keep true and false statements approximately equal in length
 Make half the statements true and half false.
 Try to avoid such words as “all,” “always,” “never,” “only,” “nothing,” and “alone.” Students
know these words usually signify false statements.
7. Beware of words denoting indefinite degree. The use of words like “more,” “less,” “important,”
“unimportant,” “large,” “small,” “recent,” “old,” “tall,” “great,” and so on, can easily lead to ambiguity.
8. State items positively. Negative statements may be difficult to interpret. This is especially true of
statements using the double negative. If a negative word, such as “not” or “never,” is used, be sure to
underline or capitalize it.
9. Beware of detectable answer patterns. Students can pick out patterns such as (TTTTFFFF) which
might be designed to make scoring easier.

Matching-Test Items
These consist of two columns: a premise list on the left and a response lift on the
right. Students are asked to match items in the two columns. These questions help students
see the relationships among a set of items and integrate knowledge. They are less suited than
multiple-choice items for measuring higher levels of performance.
1. Provide directions. Students should not have to ask, for example, whether options may be used more
than once.
2. Use only homogeneous material. Each item in a set should be the same as the other items, for
examples all names or all numbers. When different kinds of items are used in each set, the
associations tend to be obvious.
3. Place longer material in the left column. This will help students locate matches.
4. Arrange column material in some order. For example, names can be arranged alphabetically.
5. As a rule of thumb, the response set should contain a few more items than the premise set.
6. Keep the question to one page and on the same page. Arrange items so that students will not have
to turn pages back and forth as they respond.
Essay Test Items
The essay test is probably the most popular of teacher-made tests. In general, a classroom essay test
consists of a small number of questions to which the student is expected to demonstrate in his/her response
his/her ability to (a) recall factual, conceptual, or procedural knowledge, (b) organize this knowledge, and (c)
interpret the information critically in a logical, integrated answer to the question. An essay test item can be
classified as either an extended-response or a short-answer. The latter calls for a more restricted or limited
answer in terms of form or scope. An example of each type of essay item follows.
 Extended-Response: Explain the difference between the S-R (Stimulus-Response) and the S-O-R
(Stimulus-Organism-Response) theories of personality. Include in your answer (a) brief descriptions of
both theories, (b) supporters of both theories and (c) research methods used to study each of the two
theories. (10 pts. 20 minutes)
 Short-Answer: Identify research methods used to study the S-R (Stimulus-Response) and S-O-R
(Stimulus-Organism-Response) theories of personality. (5 pts. 10 minutes)

Advantages & limitations

Essay items have several advantages. They:
 are easier and less time consuming to construct than are most other item types.
 provide a means for testing student's ability to compose an answer and present it in a logical manner.
 can efficiently measure higher order cognitive objectives (e.g., analysis, synthesis, evaluation).
Essay items also have several limitations. They:
 cannot measure a large amount of content or large number of learning objectives.
 generally provide low test reliability and low grader reliability.
 require an extensive amount of instructor's time to read and grade.
 generally do not provide an objective measure of student achievement or ability (subject to bias on the
part of the grader).

Suggestions for writing essay test items

1. Prepare essay items that elicit the type of behavior you want to measure.
Learning Objective: The student will be able to explain how the normal curve serves as a
statistical model.
Undesirable: Describe a normal curve in terms of: symmetry, modality, kurtosis and skewness.
Desirable: Briefly explain how the normal curve serves as a statistical model for estimation and
hypothesis testing.
2. Phrase each item so that the student's task is clearly indicated.
Undesirable: Discuss the economic factors which led to the stock market crash of 1929.
Desirable: Identify the three major economic conditions which led to the stock market crash of
1929. Discuss briefly each condition in correct chronological sequence and in one paragraph
indicate how the three factors were interrelated.
3. Indicate for each item a point value or weight and an estimated time limit for answering.
Undesirable: Compare the writings of Bret Harte and Mark Twain in terms of settings, depth of
characterization, and dialogue styles of their main characters.
Desirable: Compare the writings of Bret Harte and Mark Twain in terms of settings, depth of
characterization, and dialogue styles of their main characters. (10 points 20 minutes)
4. Ask questions that will elicit responses on which experts could agree that one answer is better than
another.
5. Avoid giving the student a choice among optional items, as this greatly reduces the reliability of the
test.
6. It is generally recommended for classroom examinations to administer several short-answer items
rather than only one or two extended-response items. Doing this prevents a student's grade being
based on his or her performance on only one item.
Multiple Choice Items

Writing Objective Test Items - SIMPLE MULTIPLE-CHOICE

o comes in two types: the correct-answer type and best-answer type;

o has two parts: the stem representing the problem and the set of options or alternatives;
o must have at 3 to 5 alternatives;
o ordinarily measures lower-order thinking;
o scoring is specified in the instructions.

Guidelines/Suggestions for Writing Multiple-Choice Items

1. The stem should clearly formulate a problem; it must express a complete thought of what is being asked.
Include as much of the item as possible, keeping the response options as short as possible (include only
the material needed to make the problem clear and specific. Be concise – don’t add extraneous
information).
2. Be sure that there is one and only one correct or clearly best answer.
3. Be sure wrong answer choices (distractors) are plausible. Eliminate unintentional grammatical clues, and
keep the length and form of all the answer choices equal.
4. Distribute the position of the correct answer from item to item randomly.
5. Use negative questions or statements only if the competency requires it. In most cases it is more
important for the student to know what a specific item of information is rather than what it is not.
6. Include from three to five options (two to four distractors plus one correct answer) to optimize testing for
knowledge rather than encouraging guessing. It is not necessary to provide additional distractors for an
item simply to maintain the same number of distractors for each item.
7. To increase the difficulty of an item, increase the similarity of content among the options.
8. Use the option “none of the above” sparingly and only when the keyed answer can be classified
unequivocally as right or wrong. Don’t use this option when asking for a best answer.
9. Avoid using “all of the above.” It is usually the correct answer and makes the item too easy for students
with partial information.

Writing Objective Test Items = HIGHER-LEVEL MULTIPLE CHOICE

o Involves higher level of cognitive processes

Suggestions for Writing Multiple-Choice Items to Measure Higher Level Thinking

1. Write at least some objectives that measure comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, or
evaluation to ensure that your items will be at the higher than knowledge level.
2. Use pictorial, graphical, or tabular stimuli.
3. Through these the students will be required to think at the application level of the Taxonomy of
Educational objectives and may involve even higher levels of cognitive processes.
4. Use analogies that demonstrate relationships among terms or situations that pose problems to solve
through forced choice.
Problem Solving Test Items
Another form of subjective test item is the problem solving or computational exam question. Such items
present the student with a problem situation or task and require a demonstration of work procedures.
Problem solving is classified as subjective due to the procedures used to score item responses. Instructors
can assign full or partial credit to either correct or incorrect solutions depending on the quality and kind of
work procedures presented.

Suggestions:

1. Provide directions which clearly inform the student of the type of response called for.
Undesirable: An American tourist in Paris finds that he weighs 70 kilograms. When he left the
United States he weighed 144 pounds. What was his net change in weight?
Desirable: An American tourist in Paris finds that he weighs 70 kilograms. When he left the
United States he weighed 144 pounds. What was his net weight change in pounds?

2. Separate item parts and indicate their point values.

A man leaves his home and drives to a convention at an average rate of 50 miles per hour.
Upon arrival, he finds a telegram advising him to return at once. He catches a plane that takes
him back at an average rate of 300 miles per hour.

If the total traveling time was 1¾ hours:

 How long did it take him to fly back? (1 pt)
 How far from his home was the convention? (1 pt)

Show your work for full or partial credit.