THE EFFECT OF ALTERING THE POSITION OF OPTIONS IN A MULTIPLE-CHOICE EXAMINATION

Many testing programs rely on equating procedures to achieve comparabi lity of scores on alternate test forms. One commonly accepted rule for developing equated examinations using the common-items nonequivalent groups (CINEG) design is that items common to the two examinations bei ng equated should be identical. In test construction practice, this ru le has been extended to include even the order in which options appear in the two examinations. The present study examined the performance o f a common set of items on an examination in which the order of option s for one test form was experimentally manipulated, The study sought t o determine whether reordering multiple-choice item options results in any significant effect on item difficulty. It was found that reorderi ng options can have significant but unpredictable effects on item perf ormance. A linkage is made to previous research and cautions are sugge sted regarding the effects of reordering options.