Classroom Assessment
A Practical Guide for Educators
by Craig A. Mertler
Chapter 8
Objective Test
Items
Introduction

Traditional assessment techniques—objective and
subjective test items—have been used in classroom for
years.

There is a tendency for educators to believe that their
development is simple and straightforward.

“…developing a test is easy; developing a good test
requires knowledge, skill, [and] time…” (Gallagher,
1998)
General Characteristics of
Objective Test Items

Objective test items: those with a single correct
response; regardless of who scores a set of responses, an
identical score will be obtained.
• Objective implies that subjective judgments of the
scorer do not influence an individual’s score.
• Also known as “selected-response” and “structuredresponse” items.
• Include multiple-choice, matching, and alternatechoice items.
• Typically assess lower-level skills such as
knowledge, comprehension, and application (higherorder items are much more difficult to write).
General Characteristics of
Objective Test Items

Objective test items (continued)
•
Are relatively easy to administer, score, and analyze.
•
Writing high-quality items does require substantial
time.
•
Although subjectivity is removed from the scoring
process, substantial degree of subjectivity exists in
determination of content to be covered by items.
•
Guessing is a distinct possibility.
•
Poor readers may be unjustly penalized.
General Characteristics of
Objective Test Items

General guidelines for writing objective test items
Writing Objective Items:
General Guidelines
1. Objective test items should cover important content
and skills.
2. The reading level and vocabulary of each item
should be as elementary as possible.
3. Each objective item should be stated in an
unambiguous manner, and confusing sentence
structure and wording should be avoided.
4. Objective items should not consist of verbatim
statements or phrases lifted from the text.
5. Clues to the correct answer should not be provided.
General Characteristics of
Objective Test Items

General guidelines for formatting objective tests
Formatting Objective Tests:
General Guidelines
1. Vary the types of items that appear on classroom tests.
2. Group items similar in format together so that each type
appears in a separate section.
3. Each section should be preceded by clear directions.
4. Within each section, order the items from easiest to most
difficult.
5. Although all item types will not appear on every test, they
should be arranged in the following order: true-false,
matching, short answer, multiple-choice, and essay.
6. Provide adequate space for students to respond to each item.
7. Avoid splitting an item between two pages.
General Characteristics of
Objective Test Items

General guidelines for writing objective test items
•
Begin test development with table of specifications.
 Chart shows the relationship between objectives,
content, and Bloom’s taxonomy.
 Rows specify major categories of content.
 Columns represent six levels of Bloom’s
cognitive domain.
 Cells are filled in with the number or percentage
of items to be developed for that content and at
that level.
General Characteristics of
Objective Test Items

General guidelines for writing objective test items
(continued)
• Provide assurance that tests cover a representative
and accurate sample of the content.
• Option of using published objective tests.
 Consider a basic question: Do the items match
the instruction provided to students?
 Textbook must be carefully examined for
alignment.
• Scoring is relatively easy.
 Use an answer key to arrive at the total number
of items the student answered correctly.
Types of Objective Test Items

Multiple-Choice Items
• Basic format consists of a stem and responses (one of
which is correct; others are called distractors).
• Stem may be written as either a question or an
incomplete statement.
• Three to five options.
• Useful for assessing recall of facts and application of
knowledge.
• Can be used to assess higher-order thinking skills
(much more difficult to write).
Types of Objective Test Items

Multiple-Choice Items (continued)
• Guidelines for development:
Creating Multiple-Choice Items:
General Guidelines
1.
2.
3.
4.
The stem should clearly present the problem to be addressed by the student.
All response options should be parallel in type of content.
Options should avoid the use of repetitive words.
Adjectives or adverbs that substantially alter the meaning of a stem or option
should be emphasized.
5. All distractors in the response set should be plausible.
6. The grammar in each option should be consistent with the stem.
7. Items should avoid the inclusion of “all of the above,” “none of the above,” or
any equivalents as response options.
8. The use of absolute terms should be avoided.
9. Items should remain independent of one another.
10. Avoid nongrammatical clues such as a key term appearing in both the stem and
correct response.
Types of Objective Test Items

Multiple-Choice Items (continued)
• Advantages
 Allow a test to comprehensively and efficiently
sample the content domain.
 Can be used in virtually all subject areas.
 Can be scored relatively quickly.
 Scoring is an objective process.
 Can provide diagnostic information.
• Limitations
 Susceptible to guessing.
 Can be quite time consuming to construct.
Types of Objective Test Items

Multiple-Choice Items (continued)
•
Variations
 Correct-answer and best-answer variations.
 Combination of multiple-choice item and shortanswer essay.
 Metacognitive multiple-choice item (“Explain your
response…”).

Provides opportunities for students to reflect
on and explain their thinking.
Types of Objective Test Items

Matching Items
•
Basic format consists of two lists (stimuli and
responses).
•
Should be a one-to-one correspondence between
members of the two lists.
•
Considered to be a special case of multiple-choice
item.
•
Can assess knowledge and comprehension skills.
•
Especially useful in measuring understanding of
concepts or terms that are interrelated.
Types of Objective Test Items

Matching Items (continued)
• Guidelines for development:
Creating Matching Items:
General Guidelines
1. The lists should be homogeneous.
2. The directions (i.e., the basis for matching) must be made
clear.
3. Avoid “perfect matching” by placing more items in the
response list than in the stimulus list.
4. Use relatively short lists of stimuli and responses.
5. Place longer phrases in the stimulus list and shorter ones in
the response list.
6. Arrange the lists in some logical order.
Types of Objective Test Items

Matching Items (continued)
• Advantages
 Permit efficient assessment of related facts, ideas,
and concepts.
 Relatively easy to construct.
 Basically a combination of multiple-choice items
using the same set of responses.
 Scoring is relatively easy.
• Limitations
 Require large amount of related concepts or ideas.
 Very difficult to design for higher-order skills.
Types of Objective Test Items

Alternate-Choice Items
•
Essentially a special case of multiple-choice items
where options are limited to only two choices.
•
Most popular type is the true-false item.
•
Variations might include “correct–not correct,”
“yes–no,” and “fact–opinion.”
•
Can be effective if written carefully (despite negative
press).
•
Tend to overestimate student achievement since
students have a 50% chance of guessing the correct
answer.
Types of Objective Test Items

Alternate-Choice Items (continued)
• Guidelines for development:
Creating Alternate-Choice Items:
General Guidelines
1. Avoid the use of absolute terms and other specific
determiners.
2. Avoid testing trivial knowledge.
3. Items should be stated positively; if a negative must be used,
underline, bold, or italicize the term.
4. Roughly half of the test items should be keyed true and half
false.
5. True statements and false statements should be of equal
length.
6. True-false items should be entirely true or entirely false.
Types of Objective Test Items

Alternate-Choice Items (continued)
•
Advantages
 Relatively quick to construct, answer, and score.
 Can be scored efficiently and objectively.
•
Limitations
 Highly susceptible to guessing.
 Predominantly lower-level skills are
appropriately assessed with these items.
Types of Objective Test Items

Alternate-Choice Items (continued)
•
Variations
 Yes-no item
 Correction true-false item—requires students to
rewrite any statement that is false.
 Embedded alternate-choice item—presents a series of
alternate-choice items within a paragraph.
 Multiple true-false item—hybrid between multiplechoice and alternate-choice items (multiple truefalse statements, each using the same stem).
Item Analysis

Item Analysis: Analysis of statistical characteristics of
each item appearing on a test for purposes of making
decisions about retaining, discarding the items.
•
Items should be evaluated:
 While items are being drafted (using table of
specifications, guidelines, etc.).
 Following test administration and scoring.
Item Analysis

Item Analysis (continued)
•
Four basic statistics:
 Item difficulty: Proportion of students who
answered item correctly.
 Item discrimination: Difference between
proportion of correct answers in high-scoring
and low-scoring groups.
 Distractor analysis: Examines patterns of
response for incorrect options.
 Reliability: Overall consistency across all items.
Item Analysis

Item Analysis (continued)
•
Item difficulty
 Symbolized by p.
 Simply divides the number of students who
correctly answered an item by the number who
attempted the item.
 Can range from .00 (difficult) to 1.00 (easy).
 Consider revising any item where p < .20 or
p > .85.
Item Analysis

Item Analysis (continued)
•
Item difficulty (continued)
 Good judgment should also be used in
conjunction with statistical analyses.
 Teachers could reasonably expect all students to
correctly answer some items; therefore, p = 1.00
indicates that all students have mastered the
concept.
Item Analysis

Item Analysis (continued)
• Item discrimination
 Symbolized by D.
 Purpose is to see how well each item
discriminates between low- and high-scoring
students (on entire test).
 If item functions well, most students in highscoring group will answer it correctly and most
students in low-scoring group will answer it
incorrectly.
 Positively and negatively discriminating items.
 Typically ranges from +.10 to +.60; any negative
items should be revised or discarded.
Item Analysis

Item Analysis (continued)
•
Distractor analysis
 Informally examines patterns of responses across
all options.
•
Reliability
 Calculation of KR-21 reliability coefficient.
 Ranges from .00 to 1.00; desirable range for
classroom tests is from .70 to 1.00.
•
Sample item analysis…
Validity and Reliability of
Objective Test Items

Validity
•
Must be able to answer the following:
 Am I measuring what I intend to measure?
 To what degree do I have confidence in the
decisions I will make based on those measures?
•

Of primary interest is content evidence of validity.
Reliability
•
Established through the use of statistical analyses,
specifically, KR-21 reliability coefficient.