Guidelines for Writing Multiple Choice Questions:

Constructing good multiple choice items requires plenty of time for writing, review, and revision. If you write a few questions after class each day when the material is fresh in your mind, the exam is more likely to reflect your teaching emphases than if you wait to write them all later. Writing questions on three-by-five index cards or in a word-processing program will allow you to re-arrange, add, or discard questions easily.

The underlying principle in constructing good multiple choice questions is simple: the questions must be asked in a way that neither rewards "test wise" students nor penalizes students whose test-taking skills are less developed.

The following guidelines will help you develop questions that measure learning rather than skill in taking tests.

Writing the Stem:

The "stem" of a multiple-choice item poses a problem or states a question. The basic rule for stem-writing is that students should be able to understand the question without reading it several times and without having to read all the options.

1. Write the stem as a single, clearly-stated problem. Direct questions are best, but incomplete statements are sometimes necessary to avoid awkward phrasing or convoluted language.


2. State the question as briefly as possible, avoiding wordiness and undue complexity. In higher-level questions the stem will normally be longer than in lower-level questions, but you should still be brief.


3. State the question in positive form because students often misread negatively phrased questions. If you must write a negative stem, emphasize the negative words with underlining or all capital letters. Do not use double negatives--e.g., "Which of these is not the least important characteristic of the Soviet economy?"

Writing the Responses:

Multiple-choice questions should usually have either four or five options to make it difficult for students to guess the correct answer. The basic rules for writing responses are:

1. Students should be able to select the right response without having to sort out complexities that have nothing to do with knowing the correct answer and
2. They should not be able to guess the correct answer from the way the responses are written.
3. Therefore:
   • Write the correct answer immediately after writing the stem and make sure it is unquestionably correct. In the case of "best answer" responses, it should be the answer that authorities would agree is the best.
   • Write the incorrect options to match the correct response in length, complexity, phrasing, and style. You can increase the believability of the incorrect options by including extraneous information and by basing the distractors on logical fallacies or common errors, but avoid using terminology that is completely unfamiliar to students.
   • Avoid composing alternatives in which there are only microscopically fine distinctions between the answers, unless the ability to make these distinctions is a significant objective in the course.
   • Avoid using "all of the above" or "both A & B" as responses. These options make it possible for students to guess the correct answer with only partial knowledge.
     • Furthermore, these types of responses make it all but impossible to randomize responses.
   • Use the option "none of the above" with extreme caution. It is only appropriate for exams in which there are absolutely correct answers, like math tests, and it should be the correct response about 25% of the time in four-option tests.
     • Again, you cannot randomize responses when using the "none of the above" response option.
   • Avoid giving verbal clues that give away the correct answer. These include: grammatical or syntactical errors; key words that appear only in the stem and the correct response; stating correct options in textbook language and distractors in everyday language; using absolute terms--e.g., "always, never, all," in the distractors; and using two responses that have the same meaning.

General Issues

1. Base each question on student learning objectives, not trivial information.
2. All questions should stand on their own.
   • Avoid using questions that depend on knowing the answers to other questions on the test.
   • Also, check your exam to see if information given in some items provides clues to the answers on others.
3. Develop a "randomly generated " exam from a question pool.
• The question pool should contain at least three questions for each question used in the exam.
  • So, a 15-question exam should be generated from a pool of at least 45 questions.
4. Randomize the position of the correct responses.
• Placing responses in alphabetical order will usually do the job.
• Remember, you can not randomize responses containing the following options:
• All of the above.
• None of the above.
• A and B above.
• Etc.

Additional Resource Links:

• Writing Multiple-Choice Items Which Require Comprehension.
• Test Item Writing (University of Alabama at Birmingham)
• Writing Multiple-Choice Questions that Demand Critical Thinking (University of Oregon).
• Writing a Successful Multiple-Choice Exam (University of Western Ontario).
• Multiple-Choice Item Construction (University of Calgary).
• Writing multiple-choice questions; Instructional Assessment Resources, The University of Texas at Austin

Used with permission from the
Center for Teaching and Learning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
And
The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Park University (http://www.park.edu/)

If you have any questions about online assessment, please feel free to contact John Crane (jcrane@uwf.edu, 473-7239).

Have a great day!