I forgot to address the issue I left in below: I have published data that actually students do NOT do better when given three versus four options. Students know right away which is the poorest distractor and then, I found a trend towards selecting particular distractors reflecting material that is often misunderstood. Few students play multiple guess. Most students really do study. Unfortunately, they often misunderstand things (like negative reinforcement/punishment).
The advantage of 3 versus 4 distractors is that you can sample over a much broader range of items in a given time frame--the time taken to read and reject a clearly wrong distractor is eliminated. Annette Taylor, A. (2004). Violating conventional wisdom in multiple choice test construction. College Student Journal, 38(4). > Go over each question to make sure there are no > ambiguous or misleading distractor items. If there > are, rewrite them or delete that particular > distractor. By removing those distractors you both > make the question easier AND raise the probability > of a correct guess. Not surprisingly, the class > average on a test with only three choices per > question is considerably higher than on a test > with four choices per question. And this is > especially true where the most difficult distractor > has been removed. > Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology University of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park San Diego, CA 92110 619-260-4006 [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
