scholarly journals MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS;

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (09) ◽  
pp. 1409-1414
Author(s):  
Muhammad Zafar Iqbal ◽  
Shumaila Irum ◽  
Muhammad Sohaib Yousaf

Objectives: The main objective of this study was to judge the quality of MCQs interms of their cognition level and item writing flaws, developed by the faculty of a public sectormedical college. Setting: This study was conducted in Sheikh Zayed Medical College, RahimYar Khan. Duration with Dates: Data was collected between June 2014 to March 2015 andthis study was completed in July 2016. Sample Size: A sample of 500 MCQs collected from25 faculty members were included in the study. Study Design: Quantitative method. StudyType: Cross sectional descriptive analysis. Material and Methods: This quantitative study wasconducted in Sheikh Zayed Medical College Rahim Yar Khan over six months period after theapproval of the study proposal. Every faculty member is supposed to write 25 MCQs in order tobecome supervisor. I collected 500 multiple choice questions from 25 faculty members readyfor submission to CPSP. The quality of all MCQs was checked in terms of item writing flawsand cognition level by panel of experts. Results: Absolute terms were observed in 10(2%),vague terms in 15(3%), implausible distracters in 75(15%), extra detail in correct option 15(3%),unfocused stem 63(12.6%), grammatical clues 39(7.8%), logical clues 18(3.6%), word repeats19(3.8%), >then one correct answer 21(4.2%), unnecessary information in stem 37(7.4%),lost sequence in data 15(3%), all of above16(3.2%), none of above 12(2.4%) and negativestem 23(4.6%). Cognition level l (recall) was observed in 363(72.6%), level ll (interpretation) in115(23%) and level lll (problem solving) in 22(4.4%) items. Total 378(75.6%) flaws were identifiedand four commonest flaws were implausible distracter 75(15%), unfocused stem 63(12.6%),grammatical clues 39(7.8%) and unnecessary information in stem 37(7.4%). Conclusion: It isconcluded that assessment of medical students is very demanding and need of the time. A wellconstructed,peer-reviewed single best type MCQ is best one to complete this task becauseof cost effectiveness, better reliability and computerized marking. It is very important to startfaculty development program in order to decrease the number of item writing flaws and improvecognition level towards problem solving and application of knowledge.

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Imtiaz Uddin ◽  
Iftikhar Uddin ◽  
Izaz Ur Rehman ◽  
Muhammad Siyar ◽  
Usman Mehboob

Background: MCQs type assessment in medical education is replacing old theory style. There are concerns regarding the quality of the Multiple Choice Questions.Objectives: To determine the quality of Multiple Choice Questions by item analysis. Material and Methods: Study was a cross sectional descriptive .Fifty Multiple Choice Questions in the final internal evaluation exams in 2015 of Pharmacology at Bacha khan Medical College were analyzed. The quality of each Multiple Choice Questions item was assessed by the Difficulty index (Dif.I), Discriminative Index (D.I) and Distracter Efficiency (D.E).Results: Multiple Choice Questions that were of moderate difficulty were 66%. Easy were 4% and high difficulty were 30%.Reasons for high difficult Multiple Choice Questions were analyzed as Item Writing Flaws 41%, Irreverent Difficulty 36% and C2 level 23%. Discrimination Index shows that majority of MCQs were of Excellent Level (DI greater than 0.25) i.e 52 , Good 32% . (DI=2.15-0.25), Poor 16%. MCQs Distracter Effectiveness (DE)= 4, 3,2,1 were 52%, 34%, 14%, and 0% respectively. Conclusion: Item analysis gives us different parameters with reasons to recheck MCQ pool and teaching programme. High proportions of difficult and sizable amount of poor discriminative indices MCQs were the finding in this study and need to be resolved


2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Madiha Sajjad ◽  
Samina Iltaf ◽  
Rehan Ahmed Khan

Objectives: To analyze the low to medium distractor efficiency items in a multiple-choice question (MCQ) paper for item writing flaws. Methods: This qualitative study was conducted at Islamic International Medical College Rawalpindi, in October 2019. Archived item- analysis report from a midyear medium stakes MCQ paper of 2nd year MBBS class, was analyzed to determine the non-functional distractors (NFDs) and distractor efficiency (DE) of items, in a total of 181 MCQs. DE was categorized as low (3-4 NFDs), medium (1-2 NFDs) and high (0 NFD). Subsequently, qualitative document analysis of the MCQ paper whose item analysis report was assessed was conducted to investigate the item flaws in the low to medium DE items. The flaws identified were coded and grouped as, within option flaws, alignment flaws between options and stem/ lead-in and other flaws. Results: Distractor efficiency was high in 69 items (38%), moderate in 75 items (42%) and low in 37 items (20%). The item-writing flaws identified in low to moderate DE items within distractors included, non-homogenous length (1.8%), non-homogenous content (8%) and repeat in distractor (1.7%). Alignment flaws between distractors and stem/ lead-in identified were linguistic cues (10%), logic cues (12.5%) and irrelevant distractors (16%). Flaws unrelated to distractors were low cognitive level items (40%) and unnecessarily complicated stems (11.6%). Conclusions: Analyzing the low to medium DE items for item writing flaws, provides valuable information about item writing errors which negatively impact the distractor efficiency. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.36.5.2439 How to cite this:Sajjad M, Iltaf S, Khan RA. Nonfunctional distractor analysis: An indicator for quality of Multiple choice questions. Pak J Med Sci. 2020;36(5):---------. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.36.5.2439 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.


2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (05) ◽  
pp. 597-603
Author(s):  
Fatima MUKHTAR ◽  
NOREEN HASHMI ◽  
MUHAMMAD ALI RAUF ◽  
Amna Anzar ◽  
Khurram Islam Butt ◽  
...  

Objective: To determine preferences of medical students for modes of teaching, qualities of a good teacher and assessmenttechniques in medical education. Design: A descriptive cross-sectional study. Setting: Lahore Medical and Dental College, Lahore. Period:January 2011. Material & Methods: All students of third and fourth year MBBS classes were included in the study (n=127). A pre-testedquestionnaire was used for data collection. A 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1(strongly disagree) to 7(strongly agree) was used to determinestudent’s preferences of teaching styles. The data was recorded using SPSS version 16.0. Descriptive statistics were computed. Results: Thepreferred teaching methods for basic science subjects were skills laboratory 88(70%), followed by problem based learning 70(55%) andinteractive lectures 65(51%). The same teaching methods i.e. skills laboratory 101(80%), problem based learning 89(70%) and interactivelectures 79(62%) were also popular for the teaching of clinical science subjects. The least preferred teaching method for both basic 51(40%)and clinical 58(46%) sciences was didactic lectures. The desirable quality of a good teacher was reported as teaching skills 111(87%) and thepreferred assessment technique was found to be multiple choice questions 90(71%). Conclusions: Students prefer the student centredteaching styles as opposed to the traditional approach. Good teaching skill is the most desirable quality of a teacher and most students like to beassessed by multiple choice questions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-68
Author(s):  
Anetha L. F. Tilaar ◽  
Hasriyanti Hasriyanti

Abstract The results of the initial interview, it was revealed that every time the final school exam was conducted, the questions tested had not been analyzed as a whole, so the quality of the questions was unknown. Therefore this study aims to analyze the odd semester final exam items in mathematics in SMP Negeri 4 Pineleng in the 2018/2019 school year in terms of reliability, validity, distinguishing features, level of difficulty and effectiveness of deceivers (specifically multiple choice questions). This type of research is a descriptive analysis with a quantitative approach. The number of subjects in this study were 97 students consisting of all VIII grade students of SMP Negeri 4 Pineleng in the 2018/2019 school year. The data collection technique used is documentation. The data is processed manually with the help of the excel program and uses the help of the Anatest Version 4 program specifically to analyze effectiveness. From the results of the analysis it can be concluded that the final semester exams for the mathematics students of SMP Negeri 4 Pineleng in the 2018/2019 school year: (1) Types of multiple choice questions, 5 questions or 16.67% have very good quality so they can be stored in the question bank for reuse , 15 questions or 50.00% still need to be revised and 10 questions or 33.33% have very poor quality so that they cannot be stored in the question bank. (2) The types of description questions, 2 questions or 40.00% have good quality, 2 questions or 40.00% need to be revised, 1 problem or 20.00% have bad quality.AbstrakHasil wanwancara awal, terungkap bahwa setiap pelaksanaan ujian akhir sekolah, soal yang diujikan belum dianalisis secara keseluruhan, sehingga kualitas soal tersebut tidak diketahui. Oleh karena itu penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis butir soal ujian akhir semester ganjil mata pelajaran matematika SMP Negeri 4 Pineleng tahun ajaran 2018/2019 ditinjau dari reliabilitas, validitas, daya pembeda soal, tingkat kesukaran dan efektifitas pengecoh (khusus soal pilihan ganda). Jenis penelitian ini adalah analisis deskriptif dengan pendekatan kuantitatif. Jumlah subjek dalam penelitian ini adalah 97 siswa terdiri dari seluruh siswa kelas VIII SMP Negeri 4 Pineleng tahun ajaran 2018/2019. Teknik pengumpulan data yang digunakan adalah dokumentasi. Data diolah secara manual dengan bantuan program excel dan menggunakan bantuan program Anatest Versi 4 khusus untuk menganalisis efektifitas. Dari hasil analisis dapat disimpulkan bahwa ujian akhir semester ganjil mata pelajarn matematika SMP Negeri 4 Pineleng tahun ajaran 2018/2019 : (1) Jenis soal pilihan ganda, 5 soal atau 16.67% memiliki kualitas sangat baik sehingga dapta disimpan di bank soal untuk dapat digunakan kembali, 15 soal atau 50.00% masih perlu direvisi dan 10 soal atau 33.33% memiliki kualitas sangat tidak baik sehingga tidak dapat disimpan di bank soal. (2) Jenis soal uraian, 2 soal atau 40.00% memiliki kualitas baik, 2 soal atau 40.00% perlu direvisi, 1 soal atau 20,00% meiliki kualitas tidak baik. 


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Parissa Sezari ◽  
Ardeshir Tajbakhsh ◽  
Nilofar Massoudi ◽  
Ali Arhami Dolatabadi ◽  
Soodeh Tabashi ◽  
...  

Background: Multiple-choice questions (MCQs) are used commonly to evaluate medical health students. Most novice educators tend to create poor quality, flawed, and low-cognitive-level questions. Therefore, there is a need for educating the assessors to maximize the quality of MCQs and evaluations. Objectives: The current study aimed to evaluate the effect of a one-day MCQ workshop on anesthesiology faculty members. Methods: Faculty members were invited to participate in a four-hour, one-day MCQ workshop. At the beginning of the workshop, the participants were questioned about their knowledge about MCQ quality indexes and also were asked about MCQ general principles (pre-test). Participants were again asked about the questions which they had in the pre-test as their post-test and were questioned about their expectations and the influence of this workshop. Results: The participants declared that their expectations were fulfilled (9.4 ± 0.6 out of 10), and the course was applicable (9.7 ± 0.7 out of 10). Before the workshop, only 12.5% of the participants know MCQ indicators. This rate increased to 41% after the workshop (P < 0.05). Also, they were questioned about Millman’s checklist for the MCQ examination. Participants’ correct answers were increased from 2.75 to 3.05 out of four (P < 0.05). Conclusions: Although previous participation in MCQ training courses did not demonstrate an increase in knowledge and attitude, it could be theorized that short-term repetition would yield better results.


2021 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 1308-10
Author(s):  
Musarat Ramzan ◽  
Khola Waheed Khan ◽  
Saana Bibi ◽  
Shezadi Sabah Imran

Objective: To perform post analysis of multiple-choice questions given in the 2nd term and send up examinations of the years 2016 to 2018, to establish relationship between difficulty (DF) and discrimination indices (DI) and to find out significant mean difference between the two. Study Design: Cross sectional study. Place and Duration of Study: Community Medicine Department, Wah Medical College, Wah, from Nov 2018 to Mar 2019. Methodology: A total of 390 Multiple-Choice Question of second term and send-up were taken for the study from the year 2016, 2017 and 2018. The response sheets were assessed by Optical Machine Reader (OMR) and the level of difficulty, power of discrimination and reliability were obtained. The data was entered in SPSS version 22. Results: A total of 315 test items were included. Results of the study showed that the reliability (KR20) for all the examined items was in the acceptable range i.e. ≥0.7 and there was no association was found between difficulty index and year p=0.310. The mean difficulty index was found to be 0.48 ± 0.22 and discrimination index as 0.24 ± 0.14. Conclusion: The analysis of 390 test items showed that most of the questions were acceptable in terms of difficulty and discrimination. There is still a need to modify and improve the testing ability of the MCQs with negative discrimination and higher difficulty index.


Author(s):  
Richa Garg ◽  
Vikas Kumar ◽  
Jyoti Maria

Background: Assessment is a dominant motivator to direct and drive students learning. Different methods of assessment are used to assess medical knowledge in undergraduate medical education. Multiple choice questions (MCQs) are being used increasingly due to their higher reliability, validity, and ease of scoring. Item analysis enables identifying good MCQs based on difficulty index (DIF I), discrimination index (DI), and distracter efficiency (DE).Methods: Students of second year MBBS appeared in a formative assessment test, that was comprised of 50 “One best response type” MCQs of 50 marks without negative marking. All MCQs were having single stem with four options including, one being correct answer and other three incorrect alternatives (distracter). Three question paper sets were prepared by disorganizing sequence of questions. One of the three paper sets was given to each student to avoid copying from neighboring students. Total 50 MCQs and 150 distracters were analyzed and indices like DIF I, DI, and DE were calculated.Results: Total Score of 87 students ranged from 17 to 48 (out of total 50). Mean for difficulty index (DIF I) (%) was 71.6+19.4. 28% MCQs were average and “recommended” (DIF I 30-70%). Mean for discrimination index (DI) was 0.3+0.17. 16% MCQs were “good” and 50% MCQs were in “excellent” criteria, while rests of the MCQs were “discard/poor” according to DI criteria. Mean for distracter efficiency (DE) (%) was 63.4+33.3. 90% of the items were having DE from 100 to 33%. It was found that MCQs with lower difficulty index (<70) were having higher distracter efficiency (93.8% vs. 6.2%, p=0.004).Conclusions: Item analysis provided necessary data for improvement in question formulation and helped in revising and improving the quality of items and test also. Questions having lower difficulty index (<70) were significantly associated with higher discrimination index (>0.15) and higher distractor efficiency.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 46
Author(s):  
LukmanFemi Owolabi ◽  
Bappa Adamu ◽  
MagajiGarba Taura ◽  
AdamuImam Isa ◽  
AbubakarMuhammed Jibo ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 4
Author(s):  
Musarat Ramzan ◽  
Shezadi Sabah Imran ◽  
Sana Bibi ◽  
Khola Waheed Khan ◽  
Imrana Maqsood

Objective: The objective of the study was to assess the quality of multiple-choice questions (MCQs) of three different assessments in the subject of Community Medicine by computing the difficulty index, discrimination index and reliability and to estimate the relationship between difficulty and discrimination indices. Study Design: Retrospective observational study. Place and Duration of Study: Department of Community Medicine at Wah Medical College from August to December 2018. Materials and Methods: Three sets of MCQs were included in the study. Mean and standard deviation of difficulty and discrimination indices were calculated and one-way analysis of variance and Kruskal Wallis test were applied on difficulty and discrimination indices. The association was determined by Pearson correlation and considered significant at p value of < 0.05. Results: The mean difficulty index of first term, second term and send-up examination were 41.5, 48.8 and 51.9 respectively. Mean discrimination indices were 0.28, 0.27 and 0.26 and reliability were 0.83, 0.81 and 0.79. In the study, 72% MCQs of the first term, 61.5 % of the second term and 63% of the send-up examinations were in the range 30-70% of difficulty. There was a significant difference in the difficulty indices of the three question papers. The correlation between discrimination and difficulty indices was curvilinear and positively correlated. Conclusion: It is concluded that all three question papers have acceptable reliability, more than 65% MCQs have acceptable difficulty index and about 69% have good discriminatory power.


Author(s):  
Vijaya K. Suryadevara ◽  
Zaheda Bano

Background: In medical education, multiple choice questions/Items are the more frequently used assessment tools to assess the knowledge abilities and skills of medical students, for being their objectivity, wide coverage in less time. However only the Quality Items gives a valid and reliable assessment. The quality of an Item is determined by difficulty index (DIF I), Discrimination Index (DI) and Distractor efficiency (DE). Aim of the study was to know the quality of Items in pharmacology by Item analysis and to develop a MCQs bank with quality Items.Methods: The present study was conducted on 150 II MBBS students of Guntur Medical College, AP, India. A class test containing 50 Items with 150 distractors from topic chemotherapy was conducted. Item with the correct choice/response was awarded with one mark and with the wrong choice zero marks, no negative marks. Each test Item was analysed with DIF I, DI and DE and the results were tabulated and tested statistically, with unpaired "t" test.Results: Mean DIF I, DI, DE values with standard deviations in the present study are 44.72+17.63%, 0.30+0.12%, 84.48+24.65 respectively. DIF I of 32 (64%) items was good to excellent range (31%-60%) 9 (18%) Items were easy (>61%) and 9(18%) Items were difficult (>30%). DI of 10 (20%) Items was good (0.15 to 0.24.) 29 (58%) Items were excellent with DI > 0.25 and 11 (22%) Items were poor with DI <0.15. Among 150 distractors, 127 (85%) were functional distractors (FDs) and 23 (15%) were non-functional distractors (NFDs). DE of 33 (66%) items with nil NFDs was 100%, for 12 (24%) Items with one NFD, was 66.6%, for 4 (8%) items with 2 NFDs was 33.3% and for 1 (2%) Item with 3NFDs DE was 0%. When unpaired "t" test was applied to the means of "difficult" and "easy" Items, 96.22+11.33% SD, 51.44+29.31% SD respectively, the p-value obtained was 0.00058, which was highly significant.Conclusions: The study showed that Item analysis is a valid tool to identify quality Items, which assess, the students’ knowledge abilities and discriminate different levels of performance abilities of students effectively.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document