Analysis of Multiple Choice Questions: Item Difficulty, Discrimination Index and Distractor Efficiency

D'Sa, Juliana Linnette; Visbal-Dionaldo, Maria liza

doi:10.5958/0974-9357.2017.00079.4

Cited by 40 publications

(36 citation statements)

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“…In nursing education multiple choice questions (MCQs) are often used to assess knowledge among nursing students (D'Sa & Visbal-Dionaldo, 2017;Mannion, Hnatsyhyn, O'Rae, Beck & Patel, 2018). Although MCQ's are easy to check and analyze particularly on large number of students, they are often difficult technically and time consuming (Mannion et al, 2018;Odukoya, Adekeye, Igbinoba, & Afolabi, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although MCQ's are easy to check and analyze particularly on large number of students, they are often difficult technically and time consuming (Mannion et al, 2018;Odukoya, Adekeye, Igbinoba, & Afolabi, 2017). Nurse educators are expected to be competent in constructing MCQ's and more than that they should be adept in analyzing whether items are valid and reliable in assessing student's learning (Hijji, 2017) because concerns regarding the quality of tests used for assessment is now increasing (D'Sa & Visbal-Dionaldo, 2017). However, only a few nurse educators have been trained specifically to develop quality MCQs and the skill in performing item analysis (Mannion et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Analysis of Multiple-Choice Questions (MCQs): Item and Test Statistics from the 2nd Year Nursing Qualifying Exam in a University in Cavite, Philippines

Obon

Rey

2019

isc

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Introduction:Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) is used extensively as a test format in nursing education. However, making MCQs still remains a challenge to educators. To avoid issues about its quality, this should undergo item analysis. Thus, the study evaluated item and test quality using difficulty index (DIF) and discrimination indices (DI), with distractor efficiency (DE); determined the reliability usingKuder-Richardson 20 coefficients (KR20); and identified which valid measure was developed. Methodology: The study was conducted among 41 level two nursing students in the College of Nursing. The qualifying examination comprised of 194 MCQs. Data were entered in Microsoft Excel 2010 and SPSS22 and were analyzed. Results: According to DIF, out of 194 items, 115 (59.53%) had right difficultyand 79 (40.7%) were difficult. Regarding DI, 17 (8.8%) MCQs were considered very gooditems to discriminate the low and high performer students. While 21 (10.8%), 32 (16.5%), 24 (12.4%), and 100 (51.5%) demonstrated good, fair quality, potentially poor, and potentially very pooritems, respectively. On the other hand, the number of items that had 100% distractor effectiveness is 57 (29.4%), as 65 (33.5%), 49 (25.3%), and 23 (11.9%) revealed 66.6%, 33.3% and 0%, respectively. The reliability of the test using KR20 is 0.9, suggesting that the test is highly reliable with considered good internal consistency. After careful analysis of each item, 55 (28.35%) items were retained without revisions. Further, the stem of the 24 (12.37%) items, the distractors of the 66 (34.02%) items and both the stem and distractors of 46 (23.71%) items were modified, and 3 (1.55%) items were removed. Discussion:The researcher recommends doing an analysis between upper and lower scorers and its relationship to DE. For future study, it will be beneficial to explore other factors like student’s ability, quality of instructions, and number of students in relation to quality of MCQs.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis of Multiple-Choice Questions (MCQs): Item and Test Statistics from the 2nd Year Nursing Qualifying Exam in a University in Cavite, Philippines

Obon

Rey

2019

isc

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“…Nowadays, the development of instructional tools to direct the academics in designing the MCQs test, particularly in nursing education, is necessitate educational target. [3][4][5] In the current study results and in relation to the general fea-tures of the study sample, the next data provides an answer to the first question of the study. Less than one half (45.5%) of MCQs in the nursing subject's exams contain writing flaws which indicated that there is an acceptable rate of flaws in writing MCQs among nursing academia in Alexandria, Egypt.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 75%

“…But, until now, many researchers found that it is a difficult mission and a challenge among nursing educators. [4][5][6][7] While MCQs have a lot of evaluation benefits, there are a lot of difficulties in its writing; it is likely to be ambiguous for the respondents. Sometimes the students may fail to understand the data in the MCQ which lead to an incorrect answer.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of multiple choice questions' instructional plan for the nursing educators

Ibrahim¹

2019

JNEP

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Multiple-choice questions (MCQs) are commonly employed tests configuration in healthcare sciences for several years. They are efficient means for formative and summative evaluation of the students in nursing education. If the MCQs are designed competently, it will be a resourceful measurement for a valid assessment of the nursing students. The present study aimed to evaluate the construction quality of MCQs and its common item flaws in core nursing subjects at Faculty of Nursing, then develop an instructional plan for MCQs construction (one best answer format) to guide nursing educators. The study passed through exploratory-descriptive and methodological research designs at the Faculty of Nursing, Alexandria University, Egypt. Two samples were selected: First, 253 MCQs were selected from the different final exams (2017-2018) of the core twelve nursing subjects; Second, 21 academic nursing educators for evaluating of the suggested instructional plan. Both samples were chosen by convenience sampling technique. MCQs Assessment Form (MCQAF) was the first tool used to assess the construction quality of MCQs development and its items flaws. The second tool was MCQs' Instructional Plan Evaluation Sheet (MCQ IPES) which measured the content and face validity of the suggested instructional plan. The results revealed that 45.5% (115 MCQs) of the study sample contained ten item flaws. As regards the assessment of MCQs construction quality, evidently, the majority of nursing subject's exams has mean scores around a satisfactory level in MCQs quality construction. After submitting the developed plan to the expert group, almost the entire group found that the developed plan is accurate, with sound information, considered the useful and valued educational resource. Moreover, it has appropriate content in vocabulary, sentence structure, grammar, and concepts. Likewise, the experts reported that the developed plan is clear enough to be used by nursing educators and it is attractive and interesting self-reference tool. Conclusion & recommendation: less than one half of the study MCQs has ten item flaws and almost all of them obtained satisfactory mean scores in MCQs quality construction. The developed instructional plan is a beginning and beneficial step for nursing educators and considered an instructional mean for MCQs construction guidance. Further studies are application of the developed plan among nursing educators and investigation of the awareness and compliance of nursing educators with the MCQs construction rules is needed.

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“…Distractor efficiency (DE) is calculated based on the number of NFD in an item and ranges from 0 -100%. NFD is choices other than keys when chosen not often by respondents (<5%), and does not carry out their functions (D'Sa & Visbal-Dionaldo, 2017;Mahjabeen et al, 2018). to analyze students' misconceptions about fluid concepts is carried out in several stages, the initial stage of data collection, data processing, description and discussion of findings in the study.…”

Section: Sd √Pqmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of Three-Tier Diagnostics Instruments on Students Misconception Test in Fluid Concept

2018

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The purpose of this research was to know the validity and reliability of instrument three-tier diagnosis to identify the students’ misconception in fluid concept. The stages of development research that used in this research were (1) The first research and collecting information, (2) planning and designing of development (3) validity and product evaluation. The instrument of the test was tested on 98 students of 3 schools. The instrument has been developed and categorized effectively because it has a valid category with the Aiken validity index value> from table V (0.75) and the reliability of the instrument has a value of 0.96 with a high category. The instrument of three-tier test that developed was able to identify the students' comprehension in students' concept and students' misconception. There are 27,58% students comprehend the concept, 45,29% students did not comprehend the concept, 24,74% students showed that misconception and 2,36% students experienced errors

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Analysis of Multiple Choice Questions: Item Difficulty, Discrimination Index and Distractor Efficiency

Cited by 40 publications

References 0 publications

Analysis of Multiple-Choice Questions (MCQs): Item and Test Statistics from the 2nd Year Nursing Qualifying Exam in a University in Cavite, Philippines

Analysis of Multiple-Choice Questions (MCQs): Item and Test Statistics from the 2nd Year Nursing Qualifying Exam in a University in Cavite, Philippines

Development of multiple choice questions' instructional plan for the nursing educators

Development of Three-Tier Diagnostics Instruments on Students Misconception Test in Fluid Concept

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