Multiple choice questions can be used as a quick way to diagnostically assess a student’s recall and understanding for a particular subject. Here are some guidelines for writing effective multiple choice questions to diagnose prior learning of concepts or theory.
Try to remove extra reading which may be confusing or distracting from the questions. Don’t provide information that could be used later in the assessment. Also, watch out for grammatical clues which give away the correct answer. Make sure you have only one correct answer, but that your other answers are just as plausible.
Good Example—Food travelling through the digestive tract passes from the stomach to the:
Bad Example—Food travelling through the digestive tract passes from the stomach, a large muscular sac located directly under the diaphragm which produces acid to the:
Avoid using negatives like "Not" when writing effective multiple choice questions. If students are familiar with the material then negative wording can confuse them because they don't initially observe it. As a result, they can make mistakes on negatively-worded questions they wouldn't otherwise make.
Good Example—Which of the following is located near the mouth?
Bad Example—Which of the following is not in the abdominal cavity?
Arrange your answers alphabetically, in increasing size (numerical) or in time sequence. Present your answers vertically as this is easier to read than horizontally
Good Example—Which organ produces acid to digest food?
Bad example—Which organ produces acid to digest food?
a. small intestine b. large intestine c. epiglottis d. stomach
When writing effective multiple choice questions, there are definitely other things you should consider. Here is a summary of the best practices in the Jim Sibley's Faculty Focus article Seven Mistakes to Avoid When Writing Multiple-Choice Questions: