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Assessment is one of the most important components of the education as it provides the evidence of students’ learning outcomes, and their growth over time. That process helps not only to students, but also teachers, families, and other stakeholders in many ways. For example, assessment is one of the tools to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching and teachers and it can provide to evaluate the program effectiveness for program developers. According to Brookhart and Nitko,(2011), assessments are used as a tool to measure, evaluate, and document learning outcome, proficiency, and educational needs.
Assessment can be formative or summative (Crooks, 2001). Formative assessments are used to monitor day-to-day learning of the students, to provide feedback to both teacher (i.e., about instructions) and students (i.e., learning process), and it also used for instructional decision making (Tyler, 1967). On the other hand, summative tests are administered after some period of instruction (e.g., after completion of a unit) and these tests are intended to evaluate the effectiveness of the overall instruction and students’ learning outcome (Kubiszyn & Borich, 2009). In general, formative assessments aim to give feedback while summative assessments intend to give grade in education settings.
The questions used in these assessments can be standardized and teacher-made. Standardized tests are administered and graded in a standardized manner. State tests and nationwide tests are examples of standardized tests. Teachers make their own quizzes and tests in class that reflect the learning goals and objectives. Additionally, the questions can be objective and subjective. Objective questions usually have only one answer, while subjective questions tend to have several correct answers. The general formats of the questions can be categorized into two groups: (1) close-ended questions, and (2) close-ended questions. Close-ended questions include True/False, Matching, Multiple Choice, and Fill-in the Blank whereas open-ended questions include Short Answers, and Essay Questions.
True/False Questions: True/False questions include statements that require test takers to decide whether the given statement is correct or incorrect. Test takers can also be asked to write the correct statement if the given statement is incorrect. True/False questions are easy to construct and grade. It is very popular because can cover wide range of content and statistical analysis can easily be conducted. True/False questions tend to assess lower levels of skills specified in Bloom’s taxonomy (1957) such as knowledge. On the other hand, there are some shortcomings of the True/False questions. With every True/False item, regardless of how well or poorly written, the student has 50% chance of guessing correctly even without reading the item. Secondly, it is not possible to evaluate higher levels of thinking skills by using True/False questions.
Test developers should consider some factors when writing True/False questions. First, the statements should be definitely true or definitely false. Second, the statements should be relatively short and kept same length during test in order to avoid misunderstanding because a long and complex statement can cause misunderstanding and this situation can reduce the validity of the question. Las, the test should include balanced number of true and false statements.
Example True/False Question:
The product of two positive numbers is positive. True / False
Matching: In matching questions, there is list of premises and list of responses that must be paired to each other. Matching is a good way to examine students’ understanding of the relationship. In addition to statements, pictures can also be used in matching questions which might be more useful when developing items for students in lower grade. Statistical analyses can also be conducted for the matching questions.
One of the shortcomings of the matching questions is the existence of correct guessing. Especially if the number of premises and responses equal then the test take do not have to match all of the pairs in order to get a full score because the last premise and response will be automatically paired. Also, matching questions tend to assess lower levels of skills specified in Bloom’s taxonomy (1957) such as knowledge and comprehension.
Test developers should consider some factors when writing matching questions. Firstly, the premises and responses should all be from the same category (i.e., homogeneous). There should be more number of responses than premises in order to decease the probability of correct guessing. Additionally, the premises should be in the left column and responses should be in the right column so that the test taker will save time when answering the question.
Example Matching Question:
1.(22)3 equals to _________ 2.0.000010 equals to _________ | a.26 b.0 c.25 d.1 e.6 |
Multiple Choice Questions: A Multiple Choice question involves a statement and more than two responses to choose from (Brookhart & Nitko, 2011). The statement is called a stem, and the incorrect answers are distractors. The stem should be written in direct and non-technical language. The choices should be independent. The distractors should appear correct unless the content knowledge is mastered by the test takers.
Multiple choice can cover a wide variety of learning objectives. Contrary to popular opinion, multiple test questions can measure higher levels of taxonomy of educational objectives. As there are more than two response options, the chance of correct guessing is lower than True/False questions. Statistical analysis such as item difficulty, item discrimination, reliability can be conducted. In Multiple Choice questions, the probability of correct guessing is lower than True/False questions (i.e., that is the case when a questions has more than two response options) but it still exists. Moreover, the multiple-choice questions are criticized as students do not create their own answers.
Writing a good multiple choice question is difficult process specially creating plausible distractors. When developing a multiple choice questions, there are some factors to be considered. For instance, the stem should clearly formulate the problem. Second, there should one and only one correct answer and distractors should appear correct unless the content knowledge is mastered. Another thing is that the response should have relatively similar lengths not to give a clue regarding correct answer. Last, the use of negative sentences in stem should be avoided unless it is necessary.
Example Multiple Choice Question:
Ilker knows the mean of four numbers is 17. If three numbers in this calculation are 14, 19, and 27, what is the last number?
a)8 b) 10 c) 12 d) 14
Fill-in the Blank
Fill- in the Blank questions are statements with blanks to be filled out. Students are required to fill in numbers, words, or phrases to complete the statements. Primary advantage of the fill in the blank assessments are easy to construct and grade. Additionally, they don’t allow test takers guess randomly and get the correct answer. If the item is not written well or if there is more than one answer then it may confuse the test taker.
Test developers should consider some factors while creating fill in the blank questions. First, there should be only one blank and the blank should be located near the end of the sentence. Additionally, if the problem requires a numerical answer then unit should be included at the end of the blank. Last, test developer should be sure that there is only one correct answer.
Example Fill in the Blank Question:
The product of two positive numbers is _____________.
Short Answer
In Short Answer questions, students are required to answer the questions in a few words or sentences. One of the advantages of short answer items is that they are easy to construct. It also eliminates guessing. On the other hand, short answer question can be objective or subjective. When there is more than correct answer then subjectivity is involved in scoring. In that case, a clear rubric should be prepared before the test is administered and partial credit can also be given. Short answer questions can be used to higher levels of skills specified in Bloom’s taxonomy (1957) such as application, analysis.
Example Short Answer Question:
Prove the identity: sin2(x) + cos2(x) = 1. Please show your work.
Essay
Essay items are open ended questions where test takers demonstrate their understanding of the content knowledge with longer written responses (Brookhart & Nitko, 2001). Questions should be written clearly with instructions. The questions should avoid rote memorization of knowledge. Students have to use their own words to write longer answer to the questions and be able to demonstrate their process of thinking. By using the essay question higher levels of thinking skills as specified in Bloom’s (1956) taxonomy such as application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
Essay type questions are easy to construct. Additionally, it eliminates the guessing as the test takers develop their own answers. On the other hand, there are some disadvantages of essay type questions. For example, they are difficult score because subjectivity is an important issue in essay type questions. So, the reliability of the grading is always questioned in essay type questions. When creating an essay item, the test developer should prepare a detailed rubric in advance. Additionally, if possible, inclusion of second a grader would increase the reliability of the grades.
Example Essay Question:
As a future math teacher, please identify and discuss the various question formats commonly found in most standardized and teacher-made tests/assessments. Discuss several recommended procedures for writing effective questions for each format discussed and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each format.