MORE EVIDENCE IN FAVOR OF 3-OPTION MULTIPLE-CHOICE TESTS

Students from two consecutive semesters were given multiple-choice tes ts over five units of an undergraduate course in psychology. During th e first semester, students were given five 50-question 4-option multip le-choice tests, and during the second semester students were given fi ve 50-question 3-option multiple-choice tests. One-hundred and forty-f our (57.6%) of the questions were identical between semesters except f or second semester test items having only 3 options. Results indicate that students performed significantly better on 3-option items than on 4-option items (corrected for chance guessing), and that this improve ment may be due to improved validity of the test items.