New guidelines for developing multiple-choice items

Abstract

The rigorous construction of items constitutes a field of great current interest for psychometric researchers and practitioners. In previous studies we had reviewed and analyzed the existing guidelines for the construction of multiple-choice items. From this review emerged a new proposal for guidelines that is now, in the present work, subjected to empirical assessment. This assessment was carried out by users of the guidelines and by experts in item construction. The results endorse the proposal for the new guidelines presented, confirming the advantages in relation to their simplicity and efficiency, as well as permitting identification of the difficulties involved in drawing up and organizing some of the guidelines. Taking into account these results, we propose a new, refined set of guidelines that constitutes a useful, simple and structured instrument for the construction of multiple-choice items.