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Selected response items are easy to score but are hard to devise. Teachers often do not spend enough time constructing items and common problems include:
- Unclear wording in the items
- True or False: Although George Washington was born into a wealthy family, his father died whenhe was only 11, he worked as a youth as a surveyor of rural lands, and later stood on the balcony of Federal Hall in New York when he took his oath of office in 1789.
- Cues that are not related the content being examined.
- A common clue is that all the true statements on a true/false test or the corrective alternatives on a multiple choice test are longer than the untrue statements or the incorrect alternatives.
- Using negatives (or double negatives) the items.
- A poor item. true or False: None of the steps made by the student was unnecessary."
- A better item. True or False: “All of the steps were necessary."
- Taking sentences directly from textbook or lecture notes.Removing the words from their context often makes them ambiguous or can change the meaning. For example, a statement from Student Development taken out of context suggests all children are clumsy. “Similarly with jumping, throwing and catching: the large majority of children can do these things, though often a bit clumsily." A fuller quotation makes it clearer that this sentence refers to 5-year-olds: For some fives, running still looks a bit like a hurried walk, but usually it becomes more coordinated within a year or two. Similarly with jumping, throwing and catching: the large majority of children can do these things, though often a bit clumsily, by the time they start school, and most improve theirskills noticeably during the early elementary years. “ If the abbreviated form was used as the stem in a true/false item it would obviously be misleading.
- Avoid trivial questions e.g. Jean Piaget was born in what year?
- 1896
- 1900
- 1880
- 1903
While it important to know approximately when Piaget made his seminal contributions to the understanding of child development, the exact year of his birth (1880) is not important.
- 1875 reads