Best practices for test creation

June 7, 2007 5:47 AM

Can anyone point me to some sources for best practices in creating end of course test questions?

Not looking to create SAT level tests but some simple end of course tests in a business environment to follow training sessions held in-house. To make sure the participants have understood the material presented we want to give a short (10 - 15 question) end of course test.

I want to make sure the questions (only multi-choice or True/False format), the answers and the feedback are worded clearly and are as unambiguous as possible and would like to use either books or more preferably web sources as a guide in wording the questions. Anybody have any good pointers or best practices for this kind of thing?

posted by worker_bee to Education (4 answers total)

"Psychometrics" is the sub-discipline of psychology that studies the making of tests (especially general tests like SAT or IQ tests, and the kinds of tests they give to screen potential employees). That might help your search, if nobody has any useful thoughts.

Might also try looking at some of these websites to see if they have anything helpful.
posted by LobsterMitten at 7:32 AM on June 7, 2007

Robert Mager has some good readable, and short series, or books on instructional design and testing. You might also look at materials for creating good evaluation/survey questions to look at removing ambiguity. I'll look at see if I know of any good web articles.
posted by ejaned8 at 7:43 AM on June 7, 2007

This guide from the navy might be appropriate. Jump to page 72. You might also try searching "instructional design creating test questions" in google.
posted by ejaned8 at 8:43 AM on June 7, 2007

We use Mager as our guide, but we also consult this brief resource: 14 Rules for Writing Multiple-Choice Questions. BYU also offers a guide for essay question writing and other assessment suggestions among their faculty resources.
posted by girlbowler at 9:52 AM on June 7, 2007