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Guidelines For Developing Test Items

The document provides guidelines for developing effective test items with single correct answers. It recommends that each item measures one objective, uses short unambiguous language, and includes parallel grammatically consistent response options. Distractors should be plausible yet incorrect and avoid clues to the right answer. The guidelines aim to create valid, reliable test items that accurately assess student understanding without ambiguity or bias.

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73 views3 pages

Guidelines For Developing Test Items

The document provides guidelines for developing effective test items with single correct answers. It recommends that each item measures one objective, uses short unambiguous language, and includes parallel grammatically consistent response options. Distractors should be plausible yet incorrect and avoid clues to the right answer. The guidelines aim to create valid, reliable test items that accurately assess student understanding without ambiguity or bias.

Uploaded by

sibel
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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GUIDELINES FOR DEVELOPING TEST ITEMS

Writing Test Items

1. An item should have one and one clearly correct answer.

2. Each item should measure only a single objective. Try to test a different point in each
question.

3. Keep each item independent from other items. Don’t give the answer away to another item.

4. Test items that should be mainly valid and reliable.

5. Each item should be as short and verbally uncomplicated as possible. Give as much context
as necessary to answer the question, but do not include superfluous information.

6. Try to avoid “all of the above” as the last option. If a student can eliminate any of the other
choices, this choice can be automatically eliminated as well.

7. Do not use “none of the above” as the last option when the correct answer is simply the best
answer among the choices offered.

8. Avoid terms such as “always” or “never,” as they generally signal incorrect choices.

9. The length, explicitness, and technical information in each alternative should be parallel so as
not to give away the correct answer.

10. Make all alternatives grammatically consistent with the stem.

11. Traditionally, 4 or 5 answer choices are used, but in most cases, three options will work
better. Typically, the fourth answer choice (distractor) is the most difficult and time-consuming to
write, and, statistically, contributes very little to the information you want from the student’s
response to the item (Haladyna, 1997, 1999; Rodriguez, 2005).

Writing Item Distractors

12. Watch for grammatical correctness in test items.

13. Item distractors should include only correct forms and vocabulary that actually exist in the
language.

13. Make all incorrect alternatives (i.e., distractors) plausible and attractive. It is often useful to
use popular misconceptions and frequent mistakes as distractors.

14. Ideally, the distractors should be equal in plausibility. However, it usually becomes
increasingly difficult to make each added distractor as plausible as the preceding distractor.
Traditionally, it has been common practice to use three distractors and one correct answer. Since in
most cases very little additional information is achieved when adding a third distractor, it is usually
adequate to stop after two distractors.

15. Don’t make a distractor humorous. Such a distractor can be a serious distraction to the real
intent of the outcome you are measuring, and has no place in a test for which the results are taken
seriously. Students are likely to eliminate the humorous choice and thus reduce the number of
choices.

16. Don’t write trick questions. The purpose of a test item is not to trick the student or measure
how a student deals with a trick question.

Guidelines for Writing the Item Stem

1. Make the stem as clear as possible so the student knows exactly what is being asked. Include
only the information that is necessary. Don’t use excessive verbiage.

5. Word the question positively. Avoid negatives such as not or except. Using negatives can be
confusing to students. If you use a negative, use caps and/or bold font to highlight it.

Guidelines for Writing Answer Choices

17. Ideally, keep the length of answer choices about equal. Sometimes this is not possible, but no
answer choice should be significantly longer or shorter than the rest of the choices, because the
student may be influenced by the length of the answer choice. On the final test form, answer choices
should be ordered where possible from shortest to longest or longest to shortest.

18. Avoid the choice “I don’t know.” This can’t be considered a plausible distractor because the
student isn’t given the choice to be distracted and is instead given the option to miss an item that the
student may have gotten correct by using partial knowledge or logic. Some experts suggest that this
choice may produce a bias in test scores for higher achieving students over lower achieving students
(Haladyna, 1997), so it makes sense to eliminate an answer choice that has the potential for
introducing bias.

19. Phrase answer choices positively as much as possible. The use of words such as not, except,
doesn’t, didn’t, couldn’t, and wouldn’t will be less problematic in the answer choices compared to
their use in the stem, and may work fine (and in some instances make the most sense) if the syntax is
well crafted, but the recommended strategy is to consider positive phrasing first.

20. 10.Avoid giving clues to the right answer in the item options. This clueing can be within the
item and between items. Avoid using terms such as always, never, none, totally, absolutely, and
completely because they set extreme limits and thus can be a clue that they are less likely (or appear
to be more likely) to be the correct answer. Similarly, terms such as often, sometimes, generally,
usually, and typically also qualify the answer choice and should be used with caution as they are
clues and are more often true.
21. 11.Using a stem that asks for the “best” answer requires careful wording for the distractors
as they all may have a degree of correctness (thus the term best) but the correct answer has to be
the best choice. It is good to get another expert’s opinion on what is the best choice and also to try
out the item on a few students prior to finalizing the item. Then what you decide is the correct
answer choice will more likely prove to be so (based on an analysis of the item statistics after the
item is administered).

22. 13.Don’t overlap choices. This applies primarily to ranges in numerical problems. For
example, if choice A is 10-20, then B should not be 20-30 but rather should be 21-30.

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