The effects of stem orientation (positively stated stem or negatively stated) and completeness (closed or complete stem and incomplete stem) of multiple-choice items on difficulty and discrimination, were studied experimentally employing 142 senior students in education (82 women and 60 men). Incomplete versus complete stems increased item difficulty but had no effect on discrimination. Stem orientation had no effect on either difficulty or discrimination. The implications of the results are discussed.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
DudychaA. L., and CarpenterJ. B. (1973). Effects of item format on item discrimination and difficulty. Journal of Applied Psychology, 58, 116–121.
2.
DuncanG. T., and MiltonE. O. (1978). Multiple answer multiple-choice test items: responding and scoring through Bayes and minimax strategies. Psychometrika, 43, 43–57.
3.
DunnT. F., and GoldsteinL. G. (1959). Test difficulty, validity and reliability as functions of selected multiple-choice item construction principles. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 19, 171–179.
4.
GronlundN. E. (1985). Measurement and evaluation in teaching. (5th ed.) New York: Macmillan
5.
HopkinsK. D., and StanleyJ. C. (1981). Educational and psychological measurement and evaluation. (6th ed.) Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall
6.
HughesH. H., and TrimbleV. (1965). The use of complex alternatives in multiple choice items. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 25, 117–126.
7.
HuttenlocherJ. (1962). Some effects of negative instances on the formation of simple concepts. Psychological Reports, 11, 35–42.
8.
WakefieldJ. A. (1958). Does the fifth choice strengthen a test item?Public Personnel Review, 19, 45–48.
9.
WasonP. C. (1961). Response to affirmative and negative binary statements. British Journal of Psychology, 52, 133–142.
10.
WilcoxR. C. (1985). Estimating the validity of a multiple choice test item having correct alternatives. Applied Psychological Measurement, 9, 311–316.
11.
ZernD. (1967). Effects of variations in question-phrasing on true-false answers by grade-school children. Psychological Reports, 20, 527–533.
