Multiple choice is versatile

Multiple choice often gets a bad rap, seen as only being useful for testing memorization and recall of facts.  Carefully phrased multiple choice questions can actually be used in the assessment of learning from remembering to synthesis, as the examples below are intended to show.  (For more information on these levels, see the page on Bloom’s Taxonomy.)  Importantly, multiple choice is ideally suited to online assessment and automatic grading.  In addition, many tools (such as quizzing features built into an LMS) offer the ability to provide immediate feedback, contextual to a response selected by a student.  In addition, as noted on the Academic Integrity materials, it is possible to ask a large number of multiple choice questions, randomly ordered and/or drawn from pools of questions, as a way to reduce the opportunity for misconduct.

Expand the sections below to see multiple choice question examples at each learning level.  At the bottom, you will also find a partial list of some multiple choice dos and don’ts.

Accompanying Answer Boxes and Part Marks

If you wanted, you could add answer boxes with multiple choice questions where students describe their answer in some way in writing.  You could leave the contents of the boxes ungraded, but available to check if misconduct is suspected on the exam.  Alternatively, if you were so inclined, you could use the written elements to assign part marks for students who get the final answer incorrect; the value here is that you could focus your marking efforts on incorrect questions only. For example,

3. Air travels without loss in a converging 1-D nozzle as shown in the figure [figure omitted]. If p₂ is 200 Pa lower than p₁ and if v₁ = 10.0m/s, what is v₂?

a. 10.0 m/s
b. 15.3 m/s
c. 18.3 m/s
d. 20.8 m/s
e. 30.6 m/s

4. Please provide all supporting calculations for Question 3 in this box OR Please briefly describe the key assumptions and steps in your solution to Question 3 in this box.

Two examples of phrasing are given in Question 4.  The first (showing calculations) might be appropriate if students are writing the exam by hand and scanning their paper, while the second (brief written description) would be more suitable for a fully online exam.

Some Multiple Choice Dos and Don’ts

First, Jim Sibley has a fantastic handout on Writing Good Multiple Choice Questions, with tips on constructing questions and interpreting the data that comes out.  A list of some other multiple choice dos and don’ts are below.

Dos

• Try to minimize the use of negatives (e.g. “not,” “false,” etc.) in questions, unless doing so makes the question awkward or more difficult to understand
• Use emphasis to highlight key, easily-overlooked words in the question (e.g. the word “not” completely changes a question, so consider emphasizing it as “NOT” instead)
• Use complete but clear and concise writing.  Try to minimize the amount of reading required, placing repeating text directly in the question stem (see Q2 from the “Understanding” section above)
• Use qualifiers such as “best example,” “most likely,” “least complete” in the question stem to phrase questions requiring judgement
• Arrange answer choices in sequence (see the Remembering and Applying examples above), unless you will be randomizing answer choices (a good practice to enhance exam integrity) on the platform you are using to deliver the questions

Don’ts (or at least things to avoid)

• Avoid giving away the answer in the question stem:

1. To determine the area beneath a function use an…
…a. Derivative
…b. Product
…c. Integral

• Avoid double negatives in questions (it becomes a logic puzzle, not a test of understanding):

2. Which of the following is NOT a reason for using multiple choice?
…a. Wanting to avoid manually grading questions
…b. Not being able to craft a high-level question
…c. Multiple choice is not an authentic assessment

• Avoid relating one answer to another (and note that the choice letters a., b., c. disappear with some online test platforms)

3. What colour(s) indicate(s) a tomato is ready to eat?
…a. Red
…b. Green
…c. Black
…d. a and b but not c
…e. b and c but not a

• Similar to the above, try to minimize the use of “None of the above” and “all of the above.” Furthermore, with randomized answer choices, all of these phrasings can become very confusing if not totally inaccurate (what happens when “None of the above” appears as the first choice).
• Again related to the above, make sure the question is not open to interpretation (i.e., red tomatoes are most common, but green and black varieties also exist); a better phrasing might be something like “What colour indicates most tomato varieties are ready to eat?”

• Avoid giving away the answer in an earlier question (i.e., you only need look at Q3 to figure this one out!)

4. Which of the following is a common method for determining if a tomato is ready to eat?
…a. Symmetry
…b. Colour
…c. Roundness