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Decreasing the options’ number in multiple choice questions in the assessment of senior medical students and its effect on exam psychometrics and distractors’ function

BACKGROUND: Studies that have investigated the effect options’ number in MCQ tests used in the assessments of senior medical students are scarce. This study aims to compare exam psychometrics between three- and five-option MCQ tests in final-year assessments. METHODS: A cluster randomized study was...

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Autores principales: Al-lawama, Manar, Kumwenda, Ben
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10072920/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37016397
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-023-04206-3
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author Al-lawama, Manar
Kumwenda, Ben
author_facet Al-lawama, Manar
Kumwenda, Ben
author_sort Al-lawama, Manar
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Studies that have investigated the effect options’ number in MCQ tests used in the assessments of senior medical students are scarce. This study aims to compare exam psychometrics between three- and five-option MCQ tests in final-year assessments. METHODS: A cluster randomized study was applied. Participants were classified into three groups, according to their academic levels. Students in each of those levels were randomized into either the three- or five-option test groups. RESULTS: Mean time to finish the five-option test was 45 min, versus 32 min for the three-option group. Cronbach’s alpha was 0.89 for the three-option group, versus 0.81 for the five-options, p-value = 0.19. The mean difficulty index for the three-option group was 0.75, compared to 0.73 for the five-option group, p-value = 0.57. The mean discriminating index was 0.53 for the three-option group, and 0.45 for the five-options, p-value = 0.07. The frequency of non-functioning distractors was higher in the five-option test, 111 (56%), versus 39 (39%) in the three-options, with p-value < 0.01. CONCLUSIONS: This study has shown that three-option MCQs are comparable to five-option MCQs, in terms of exam psychometrics. Three-option MCQs are superior to five-option tests regarding distractors’ effectiveness and saving administrative time.
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spelling pubmed-100729202023-04-05 Decreasing the options’ number in multiple choice questions in the assessment of senior medical students and its effect on exam psychometrics and distractors’ function Al-lawama, Manar Kumwenda, Ben BMC Med Educ Research BACKGROUND: Studies that have investigated the effect options’ number in MCQ tests used in the assessments of senior medical students are scarce. This study aims to compare exam psychometrics between three- and five-option MCQ tests in final-year assessments. METHODS: A cluster randomized study was applied. Participants were classified into three groups, according to their academic levels. Students in each of those levels were randomized into either the three- or five-option test groups. RESULTS: Mean time to finish the five-option test was 45 min, versus 32 min for the three-option group. Cronbach’s alpha was 0.89 for the three-option group, versus 0.81 for the five-options, p-value = 0.19. The mean difficulty index for the three-option group was 0.75, compared to 0.73 for the five-option group, p-value = 0.57. The mean discriminating index was 0.53 for the three-option group, and 0.45 for the five-options, p-value = 0.07. The frequency of non-functioning distractors was higher in the five-option test, 111 (56%), versus 39 (39%) in the three-options, with p-value < 0.01. CONCLUSIONS: This study has shown that three-option MCQs are comparable to five-option MCQs, in terms of exam psychometrics. Three-option MCQs are superior to five-option tests regarding distractors’ effectiveness and saving administrative time. BioMed Central 2023-04-05 /pmc/articles/PMC10072920/ /pubmed/37016397 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-023-04206-3 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Al-lawama, Manar
Kumwenda, Ben
Decreasing the options’ number in multiple choice questions in the assessment of senior medical students and its effect on exam psychometrics and distractors’ function
title Decreasing the options’ number in multiple choice questions in the assessment of senior medical students and its effect on exam psychometrics and distractors’ function
title_full Decreasing the options’ number in multiple choice questions in the assessment of senior medical students and its effect on exam psychometrics and distractors’ function
title_fullStr Decreasing the options’ number in multiple choice questions in the assessment of senior medical students and its effect on exam psychometrics and distractors’ function
title_full_unstemmed Decreasing the options’ number in multiple choice questions in the assessment of senior medical students and its effect on exam psychometrics and distractors’ function
title_short Decreasing the options’ number in multiple choice questions in the assessment of senior medical students and its effect on exam psychometrics and distractors’ function
title_sort decreasing the options’ number in multiple choice questions in the assessment of senior medical students and its effect on exam psychometrics and distractors’ function
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10072920/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37016397
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-023-04206-3
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