Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Jan/2024
Writing Objective Test Items
for guessing
Truth or false word are relative terms and
ability
Guidelines for Writing True/False Items
Incorporate only a single idea in each
statement.
Write sharp, clear, and grammatically
effect relationship
Cont..
Avoid absolute or relative terms (e.g., always, never,
sometimes, probably, etc) since they tend to give clue to
the correct response.
Make the length of true/false items approximately equal.
Make the number of true and false statements nearly
equal.
Avoid overlapping statements
Cont…
Randomize the occurrence of affirmative and negative
statements
Avoid directly copying from text books because it
students attention
Some Examples of Poor and Better
True/False Items
Poor: Water will boil at a higher temperature if the
atmospheric pressure on its surface is increased and more
heat is applied to the container. (Do not express the single
idea)
Better: Water will boil at a higher temperature if the
(Double negative)
Better: A body can produce sound when vibrating.
Cont…
Poor: When sodium is put in water, it takes the water
molecules apart and joins with part of the broken water
molecules making a new substance called sodium
hydroxide. (Not clear, sharp and simple)
Better: When sodium is combined with water the new
true/false)
Better: Equal sets are equivalent sets.
Poor: ማንኛውም ዘር አየርና ሙቀት ብቻ ሲያገኝ ሊበቅል ይችላል፡፡
(use of modifiers)
Better: ዘር አየርና ሙቀት ሲያገኝ ሊበቅል ይችላል ፡፡
Writing Matching Items
Strength
It is useful for testing students’ knowledge of terms,
Limitation
Difficulty of getting plausible distracters.
It is restricted to the measurement of factual
clues
Difficulty of getting homogenous distracters
Guidelines for writing Matching Items
words.
Put longer statement in the premise and shorter
stem
Limitation
It is limited to learning out comes at verbal level
It does not measure the ability to organize and present idea
Difficulty to find incorrect but plausible distracters
Guidelines for Writing Multiple-Choice
Items
Every item should reflect specific content
spelling consistently.
Avoid tricky items, those which mislead or
another item.
Develop as many effective choices as you
content.
Try to make all responses similar in length.
distractor.
Avoid conspicuous /obvious correct choice.
Avoid verbal association between the stem and the correct
answer.
An item should contain only one correct or clearly best
answer.
Examples Poor and Better Multiple
Choice Items
Poor: The cell is lets of the pancreas ____. (not a definite,
explicit and singular question in the stem)
A. 11 to 15 years
B. 13 to 19 years
C. 18 to 25 years
D. 24 to 32 years
Better : What age of range
represents the physical "peak" of life?
A. 11 to 15 years
B. 16 to 20 years
C. 21 to 25 years
D. 26 to 30 years
A. 2.50
B. 5.00
C. 6.66
D. 7.50
Writing Supply Items
The two major supply items are completion and short
answers. Short answer and completion items are
equivalent test formats: they differ only in the phrasing
of the question.
Completion Items are incomplete statements. They
is too long
They limit the number of questions that