Measures of survey reliability are commonly addressed in marketing courses. One statistic of reliability is "Cronbach's alpha." This paper presents an application of survey reliability as a reflexive application of multiple-choice exam validation. The application provides an interactive decision support system that incorporates survey item…

This paper introduces five commonly used approaches to analyzing multiple-choice test data. They are classical test theory, factor analysis, cluster analysis, item response theory, and model analysis. Brief descriptions of the goals and algorithms of these approaches are provided, together with examples illustrating their applications in physics…

A statistical test for detecting answer copying on multiple-choice items is presented. The test is based on the exact null distribution of the number of random matches between two test takers under the assumption that the response process follows a known response model. The null distribution can easily be generalized to the family of distributions…

Purpose: To provide educationalists with an understanding of the key quality issues relating to multiple-choice tests, and a set of guidelines for the quality assurance of such tests. Design/methodology/approach: The discussion of quality issues is structured to reflect the order in which those issues naturally arise. It covers the design of…

For (0, 1) scored multiple-choice tests, a formula giving test reliability as a function of the number of item options is derived, assuming the "knowledge or random guessing model," the parallelism of the new and old tests (apart from the guessing probability), and the assumptions of classical test theory. It is shown that the formula is a more…

Describes four measures of test unreliability that quantify effects of question selection and guessing, both separately and together--three chosen for immediacy and one for greater mathematical elegance. Quantifies their dependence on test length and number of answer options per question. Concludes that many multiple choice tests are unreliable…

An achievement test for the secondary school vocational electricity programs in South Carolina was constructed by a research coordinating unit (RCU) project. A trade and industrial supervisor and consultant, three electricity instructors, and four industry representatives comprised an advisory committee that participated in its development. Three…

Describes a study designed to determine if the amount of time allocated for answering multiple true/false type questions affects the grades of the medical students taking the tests. Students who had 2-1/4 minutes to answer each question scored significantly better than those who had 1-1/2 minutes or 3 minutes. (TW)

Applies Item Response Theory methods to data from the national norming of the Test of Economic Literacy to identify test questions with large male-female differences. Regression analysis showed a significant decrease in the magnitude of gender difference, although a difference was still present. (MJP)