Academic Journal
A Survey on Distractors in Multiple-choice Questions and its Relationship on Difficulty and Discriminative Indices
| Title: | A Survey on Distractors in Multiple-choice Questions and its Relationship on Difficulty and Discriminative Indices |
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| Authors: | Abdolhussein Shakurnia |
| Source: | مجله ایرانی آموزش در علوم پزشکی, Vol 19, Pp 180-188 (2019) |
| Publisher Information: | Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Medical Education Development Center, 2019. |
| Publication Year: | 2019 |
| Collection: | LCC:Medicine LCC:Medicine (General) |
| Subject Terms: | student assessment, multiple-choice questions, distractors, functioning distractors, non-functioning distractors, difficulty index, discriminative index, Medicine, Medicine (General), R5-920 |
| More Details: | Introduction: The distractors have a very important role in Multiple-Choice Question (MCQ) and it can influence the quality of the tests. This study aimed to investigate frequency of functioning and non-functioning distractors and the relationship between the distractors options with difficulty and discrimination in Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical sciences in 2017. Methods: In this descriptive-analytic study, the distractors of the MCQs in the immunology were examined. The distractors were those that selected by more than 5% of the examinees', they were considered as Functioning Distractors (FDs) and by less than 5% of the examinees' were considered as non-functioning distractors (NFDs). Data were analyzed using Analysis of Variances and Pearson correlation coefficient; for all tests error was considered as 5%. Results: Out of 2124 distractors, 1361 (64.08%) were FDs and 763 (35.92%) were NFDs. The frequency of MCQs with 0, 1, 2 and 3 FDs was 12.4%, 19.5%, 31.5% and 36.6%, respectively. There was a significant negative correlation between the number of FDs and the difficulty index (r=0.442, p=0.000), but there was not a significant correlation between the number of FDs and the discriminative index of MCQs (r=0.043, p=0.259). Conclusion: The findings showed that more than one-thirds of the distractors were NFDs. As a result of increasing the number of NFDs, the difficulty and the discriminative indices of questions decreased and led to a drop in the quality of the test. Item analysis results could be used to identify and remove non-functioning distractors from MCQs that have been used to improve the quality exam. |
| Document Type: | article |
| File Description: | electronic resource |
| Language: | Persian |
| ISSN: | 1608-9359 1735-8892 |
| Relation: | http://ijme.mui.ac.ir/article-1-4776-en.pdf; https://doaj.org/toc/1608-9359; https://doaj.org/toc/1735-8892 |
| Access URL: | https://doaj.org/article/62f1e4891ac14f85b2856f120d344218 |
| Accession Number: | edsdoj.62f1e4891ac14f85b2856f120d344218 |
| Database: | Directory of Open Access Journals |
| ISSN: | 16089359 17358892 |
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| Published in: | مجله ایرانی آموزش در علوم پزشکی |
| Language: | Persian |