Handbook for setting up courses

UNION EUROPÉENNE DES MÉDEC INS SPÉC IAL I STES EUROPEAN UNION OF MEDI CAL SPEC IAL I STS Association internationale sans but lucratif – International non-profit organisation

8) The responses should be similar in length.

a) There is a tendency among item writers to make the correct answer the longest answer.

b) Astute candidates in examination technique may therefore be able to correctly guess the correct answer on a disproportionate number of occasions.

9) When writing distractors, it is wise to avoid the use of superlatives such as " always " and " never "

a) Statements containing these items are highly likely to be incorrect and candidates will discard these options thereby increasing the chances of correctly guessing the correct answer.

10) Each distractor should be mutually exclusive and not overlapping.

a) Example : if a series of percentages is to be used for the responses, each range must be unique to the response.

A.

5 - 20

B.

25 - 40

C.

45 - 60

D.

65 - 80

E.

85 - 100

b) If responses are overlapping, the candidate may not be able to determine the best answer not because they do not know the answer, but because the answer is incorporated into more than one response.

c) This may also lead to challenges of validity of the exam result by unsuccessful candidiates who will argue more than one response is correct due to this overlap.

11) Avoid using “ none of the above ”, “ all of the above ”, as a response.

a) The “ none of the above ” response does not test what the candidate knows, but only that he/she can recognize that the correct answer is not present.

b) The “ all of the above ” response is essentially an overlapping response, because it requires the candidate to consider the responses in combination

c) Knowing that two are correct leads the astute candidate to “ all of the above ” by default without knowing the importance or correctness of the remaining responses.

12) To make distractors more plausible, use words that should be familiar to the examinee.

A VENUE DE LA C OURONNE , 20 9

T +32 2 649 51 64 F +32 2 640 37 30 info@uems.net

BE- 1050 BRUSSELS

www.uems.net