Types Of Test Questions

The aim of every educational program/process is to bring desired changes in students’ behaviors. These changes are mentioned in the form of educational goals and objectives in a  curriculum. But how we would know that whether these educational goals and objectives have been successfully achieved or not at the end of any educational episode. To answer this question we would need some tools of assessment and measurement.  Classroom tests and standardized test are those tool which can be used for this purpose.  They play a crucial role in the process of learning and instructions. They can be used for measuring a variety of learning outcomes, ranging from simple to complex and higher-order skills.  In other words, different tests and assessment tools are used for measuring different learning outcomes at different levels. So the same type of test items could not be used for measuring all types of learning outcomes. There are mainly two types of test items which are extensively used in the field of education i.e. objective type test items and subjective or essay type test items.

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Useful Guidelines for Classroom Tests Construction

In the field of education, we use a variety of test items for measuring various learning outcomes. We usually think that all of them are equally valid and reliable in measuring the desired learning outcomes. But, unfortunately, it is not always true, in fact, its validity and reliability is subject to its careful construction and applications. Therefore, it is necessary to specify some rules for its construction. Test specialist/experts have suggested some general rules for constructing various test items. Here I am going to tell you about some of the general rules of test construction. While pacific rules for each type of test items will be discussed later.

1.    Write more test items than needed. So it would be possible to replace one item, if it seemed inadequate to you during the final review, by another suitable item.

2.    All the test items should be exclusively constructed, so that one test item may not be used for answering another test item by the test taker.

3.    The wording and phrasing of test items should be simple and not beyond the learned vocabulary of the students.

4.    Test items should be written in advance. In other words, It will be better to write down test items during each instructional session. So you will have a sufficient repository of test items at the end of an educational episode.

5.    One test item should represent only one problem at a time.

6.    Write test items in such a way that every test item would  have one and only one correct or agreed upon answer.

7.    Use table of specifications as a guide when you are constructing a test.

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