A biochemistry examination administered to 114 dental students consisted of 20 items that measured knowledge and 18 items that measured either comprehension or application. Each item was written with five choices, half the class being presented the original version, half a content-similar derivative that included three choices. (Author/LMO)

Despite the popularity of both multiple-choice (MC) and true-false (TF) items, most investigations comparing the two formats have done so to determine the optimum number of choices to be given to students within a given time period. The purpose of this investigation was to compare the reliabilities and the validities of both formats when the items…

This study compared the item difficulty and item discrimination of three multiple choice item formats. The multiple choice formats studied were: a complex alternative (none of the above) as the correct answer; a complex alternative as a foil, and the one-correct answer format. One hundred four graduate students were randomly assigned to complete…

The comparative effects of various sequences of test items were examined for over 900 graduate students enrolled in an educational research course at The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. experiment, which was conducted a total of four times using four separate tests, presented three different arrangements of 50 multiple-choice items: (1)…

When test questions are not intended to measure language skills, it is important to know if language is an extraneous characteristic that affects item performance. This study investigates whether certain stylistic changes in the way items are presented affect item performance on examinations for a health profession. The subjects were medical…