Teaching Prepared by Caroline W. Ndirangu

B)  True-False Items: 
Characteristics 
These are test items where the learner is asked to indicate whether a statement 
given is true or false.
The major advantage of true-false test items are:
•  A true-false test can satisfactorily cover a large amount of subject matter 
in a short time.
•  True-false questions are relatively easy to construct.
•  They are particularly suitable for testing belief in popular misconcep-
tions and superstitions.
Limitations 
•  They often measure trivial pieces of information that are similar to 
many short answer items.
•  The scores of students on a true-false test can be greatly influenced by 
good or Poor luck in guessing.
•  True-false items are often ambiguous.
•  The exposure of students to false items is definitely a poor method of 
learning.
Guidelines
•  Attempt to use statements that are clearly true or false, without excep-
tions.
•  Avoid the use of specific determiners such as ‘all’, ‘always’, and ‘never.’
•  Try to restrict each statement to a single idea.
•  Use an approximately equal number of true and false items.
•  Make an effort to avoid negative statements
•  Avoid the exact wording of the textbook.
Write 12 examples of True/False items. How can you ensure they have high order 
questions?

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African Virtual University
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C)  Multiple Choice Test items:  These are the most popular of the objective 
test. They consist of direct questions followed by two, three or four possible 
answers, of which only one is to be chosen as the correct or best answer.
The following are advantages of multiple choice test items:
•  Multiple choice test items can measure a variety of knowledge skills 
including recall, understanding, applications and combinations of all 
three.
•  Multiple choice test items are relatively efficient, that is, the results of 
the test are usually quickly available after the test because it is easy to 
mark.
•  The difficulty level of the multiple choice test item can be controlled by 
changing the degree of homogeneity of the items listed. This is done by 
including simple or difficult questions.
•  Multiple choice are less likely than true-false questions to produce score 
variations because of guessing.
Limitations
•  They usually ask trivial, ambiguous questions that may handicap the 
really able student.
•  They are not easy to construct, in that they take a lot of time on the part 
of the teacher.
•  There is a tendency for teachers to write multiple choice test items that 
demandonly factual knowledge.
Guideline
•  Choose relevant, important topics from which to develop the items.
•  Write the stem first, try to make it as short as possible and use clear, 
simple language. (The stem is the part of the question which introduces 
the items between which the student is asked to choose.)
•  Try to make all the distracters equally plausible to well prepared stu-
dent, butobviously wrong to well prepared students. The word ‘dis-
tracters’ refers to those words or sentences that are not correct answers. 
These are listed together with the correct answer so as to confuse a 
student who is not well prepared for the multi-choice test.
•  Make all the alternatives about equal in length.
•  Place the correct answer equally often in each position.
•  Arrange the responses in a logical order.
•  Make sure all responses fit grammatically with the stem. If only gram-
matical way, you are providing a clue for the student who is guessing. 
•  Phrases such as ‘None of these’ should be avoided as a distracter in best-
answer choices.

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African Virtual University
   
Formulate 6 examples multiple choice questions they should fall into one of the 
three cognitive domains.
i).   Read specifically about the practical and oral examinations and write 
down: their characteristics, limitations and guidelines of formulating them 
in 200-250 words for each of them. 
Which subjects are commonly tested this way?