Chapter 6

Selected-Response Tests

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-1
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Outline

• Definition of Selected-Response Items

• Five Item-Writing Commandments
• Four Types of Items
• Binary-choice
• Multiple binary-choice
• Multiple-choice
• Matching

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-2
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Definition of Selected-Response

• Student selects response or answer to an item from a set of

response options provided
• Four types
• Binary-choice items
• Multiple binary-choice items
• Multiple-choice items
• Matching items

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-3
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Five General Item-Writing
Commandments
• Purpose is to promote the construction of better
assessment procedures
• Guidelines address
• Directions
• Item construction
• Vocabulary

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-4
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Commandment Number 1:
Thou shall not provide opaque test directions

• Characteristics of opaque directions

• Unclear
• Incomplete
• Opaque directions can result in
• Confusion among students
• Inaccurate inferences made about test-takers
• Solution: Don’t let directions be an after-thought

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-5
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Commandment Number 2:
Thou shall not employ ambiguous statements

• Ambiguous statements are to be avoided

• Ambiguous statements can result in
• Misinterpretation of the item among students
• Inaccurate answers provided by students
• Solution: Reread the items through the eyes of your students

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-6
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Commandment Number 3:
Thou shall not provide unintentional clues

• Intentionally avoid unintentional clues

• Result of item construction
• Lengthy response options
• Qualifiers such as always and never
• Patterns in the correct responses

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-7
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Commandment Number 3:
Thou shall not provide unintentional clues

• Unintentional clues result in

• Correct responses without the knowledge or skill measured by the item
• Inaccurate inferences made about test-takers
• Solution: Review items carefully

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-8
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Commandment Number 4:
Thou shall not employ complex syntax

• Avoid complex construction

• Solution: Use simple sentence

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-9
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Commandment Number 5:
Thou shall not use more advanced vocabulary

• Avoid using vocabulary that is not common to all test-takers

• Advanced vocabulary can result in incorrect inferences made
using test scores
• Solution: Use simple vocabulary

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-10
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Types of Selected Response

• Binary-choice
• Multiple binary-choice
• Multiple-choice
• Matching

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-11
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Binary-Choice Items
• Definition
• Only two response options
• Types
• Most common is true-false
• Others include
• Yes-no
• Correct-incorrect
• Fact-opinion

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-12
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Binary-Choice Items
• Advantages
• Quick response time
• Cover large amount of material in short time
• Disadvantages
• Easy to guess correct answer
• Only need to recognize correct answer

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-13
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Binary-Choice Items
Guidelines for Construction
• Construct items that are not blatantly true or blatantly false
• Minimize the use of negatives
• Use negatives, such as not
• Never use double negatives
• Construct items to include only one concept

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-14
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Binary-Choice Items
Guidelines for Construction
• Have an equal number of the two response categories as
correct responses
• Keep item length similar for the two categories of responses
• Don’t consistently make the items for one response category longer
• Unequal length results in unintentional clues

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-15
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Multiple Binary-Choice Items
• Definition
• Cluster of items that require only two response options
• Items generally related by an initial statement or set of statements
• Appearance is similar to multiple-choice

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-16
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Multiple Binary-Choice Items
• Advantages (Frisbie, 1992)
• Efficient for gathering achievement data
• More reliable than other selected-response
• Measure same skills and knowledge as multiple-choice
• More efficient than multiple-choice
• Disadvantages
• Only need to recognize correct answer

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-17
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Multiple Binary-Choice Items
Guidelines for Construction
• Item clusters should be separate from one another
• Items should mesh will with clusters’ stimulus material
• Formatting should be clear
• Easy to identify the items that go with a cluster
• Easy to identify that a new cluster is beginning

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-18
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Multiple -Choice Items
• Definition
• Consists of a stem
• Statement or series of statements
• Direct-question form
• Incomplete-statement form
• Present potential answer options, called item alternatives
• Include plausible incorrect choices, called distractors, in alternatives

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-19
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Multiple-Choice Items
• Advantages
• Very common type of item
• Measure knowledge or skill at a higher level
• Answers can differ by relative correctness
• Disadvantages
• Only need to recognize the correct answer

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-20
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Multiple-Choice Items
Guidelines for Construction
• Stem should be a self-contained question or problem
• Negatively stated stems should be avoided
• Item alternatives should be approximately same length
• Four-five item alternatives typically used

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-21
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Multiple-Choice Items
Guidelines for Construction
• Correct responses should be scattered equally among choices
• All-of-the-above should not be used as item alternative
• None-of-the-above should be used as item alternative, but
sparingly
• Use to increase item difficulty
• Consider using best-answer instead

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-22
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Matching Items
• Definition
• Consists of two parallel lists of words or phrases that students match
according to some specified association
• Premise is the list for which a match is sought
• Response is the list that contains the selections

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-23
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Matching Items
• Advantages
• Compact
• Assess a long of information in one matching item
• Easy to construct
• Disadvantages
• Encourage memorization
• Only have to select correct response

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-24
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Matching Items
Guidelines for Construction
• Lists should be homogeneous
• Avoid unintentional clues
• Reduces guessing
• Lists should be brief
• Approximately ten premises
• Place short phrases at the right
• Extra responses should be included
• Reduces guessing

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-25
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Matching Items
Guidelines for Construction
• Responses should be ordered in a logical manner
• Alphabetical
• Chronological
• All premises and responses should be on one page

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-26
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Summary
• Selected-response items require students
to select answer to an item
• Five thou shall not haves
• Unclear Directions
• Ambiguous statements
• Unintentional clues
• Complex syntax
• Hypersophisticated vocabulary

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-27
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Summary
• Four common types of items
• Binary-choice, multiple binary-choice,
multiple-choice, and matching
• Consider the strengths/weaknesses and construction guidelines of
each when constructing an assessment

Popham
Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need To Know, 7e 6-28
© 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.