RESEARCH LIBRARY

Advances in Health Sciences Education

Recent advancements enable replacing MCQs with SAQs in high-stakes assessments, but prior research often used small samples under low stakes and lacked time data. This study assesses difficulty, discrimination, and time in a large-scale high-stakes context

Integrating Timing Considerations to Improve Testing Practices

This chapter addresses a different aspect of the use of timing data: it provides a framework for understanding how an examinee's use of time interfaces with time limits to impact both test performance and the validity of inferences made based on test scores. It focuses primarily on examinations that are administered as part of the physician licensure process.

Adv in Health Sci Educ 24, 141–150 (2019)

Research suggests that the three-option format is optimal for multiple choice questions (MCQs). This conclusion is supported by numerous studies showing that most distractors (i.e., incorrect answers) are selected by so few examinees that they are essentially nonfunctional. However, nearly all studies have defined a distractor as nonfunctional if it is selected by fewer than 5% of examinees.