by Jing “Taylor” Wen
Ph.D. student, University of Florida

Jing “Taylor” Wen

Multiple-choice test is widely used in many undergraduate courses to evaluate students learning. Instructors like multiple-choice tests because such tests offer flexibility for assessing a diversity of content, allow for reliable assessment of scores, and are efficient in terms of time involved in grading. The key to taking advantage of these strengths, however, is constructing good multiple-choice items

On the other hand, poorly constructed items encourage guessing and fail to measure the test taker’s learning. We have to admit that not every multiple-choice test question is well constructed and effective in measuring what students have learned in class. The following are tips for instructors to create better multiple-choice test items and avoid the mistakes frequently seen in the ill-constructed tests.

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