Constructed-response exam questions, such as essays and completion items, have many advantages over fixed-response items. Some of these advantages of completion items (fill in the blank) include their ease of construction, reliability, and increase in generalizability. The disadvantages or limitations include that they really can only measure recall of information and yet they also are more susceptible to confusion in scoring than true/false or multiple choice tests. When designing good completion item test questions some qualities to keep in mind include:
1. Make sure your item measures the targeted skill.
2. Keep the reading level below the students’ ability.
3. There should only be one correct answer.
4. Make sure not to take a question directly from the book, phrased in the same manner, to avoid just measuring memorization instead of comprehension and being careful the question does not lose its meaning.
5. Include the unit of measurement if the answer requires a numerical response.
6. Use a key word for the answer to the “blank”.
7. Keep the answer “blank” toward the end of the question to keep the reader from being confused and having to reread and possibly lose meaning.
8. Limit the number of blanks in the question.
As for essay questions, the advantages include their ability to measure the objective more directly, allow examination of the test taker’s writing ability, and allows for the student to explain their logic or reasoning. The disadvantages of essays lie in the difficulty of creating good essay questions, not as much sampling of the content can occur, more difficult to score, and the scoring itself is not as reliable. Some important qualities of good essay questions include:
1. Item must measure targeted skill.
2. Keep the reading level below the students’ ability.
3. Answers should be able to be completed in less than 10 minutes.
4. Scoring should be consistent no matter who scores it.
5. The scoring plan describes a correct and complete response.
6. The scoring plan is obvious to knowledgeable learners.
It becomes obvious when evaluating good essay questions that the scoring and evaluation is tantamount to the question. The best essay questions will be to-the-point on the objective, provide a clear directive or explanation, and the scoring plan will be detailed, specific and complete.
I am teaching a Personal Finance class for the first time this semester. The manufacturer provides test questions for each chapter. The next chapter we will be addressing is Budgeting. I thought I should use their questions since they are the “professionals” and I am just beginning and inexperienced. The information I am learning is at least providing a basis for me to examine their questions more closely. Two of their fill in the blank questions are:
*Assets minus liabilities equals ____________________________.
*______________________ expenses are costs that vary in amount and type, depending on the choices you make.
This first question meets the requirements that there is one obvious, best answer and it is phrased with the blank at the end of the question. The second question is more vague and could be rearranged with the blank at the end, making the question easier to read. We could rephrase the question as follows:
*Some of your expenses each month vary in type and amount by the choices you make, we call these ______________________ expenses.
One of their essay questions is:
*What is a prenuptial agreement? Under what circumstances would a prenuptial agreement be appropriate?
The answer is: A prenuptial agreement is a contract that specifies what will happen if a marriage ends in divorce. Generally, if two parties of unequal wealth enter into a marriage, a prenuptial agreement may be required in which the person without wealth agrees that he or she will receive a set amount as a settlement, rather than half of what the other person owns, if the marriage ends. This type of agreement serves to protect an individual’s assets from a spouse who may have entered into the marriage fraudulently for financial gain.
This essay meets the requirements that it targets specific information, it can be answered in less than 10 minutes, it is below the senior high reading level, and scoring is obvious to a knowledgeable learner and scorer. The only issue I wonder about is that the publisher assigned 1 pt. to this question. It provides the same weight to the true/false and multiple choice. It will take me longer to score this question and some students will not answer it completely.
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