COGNITIVE-COMPLEXITY AND THE COMPARABILITY OF MULTIPLE-CHOICE AND CONSTRUCTED-RESPONSE TEST FORMATS

Criticism within the educational community of the multiple-choice form at is in no short supply and seems to revolve around an alleged inabil ity of multiple-choice tests to assess higher order thinking skills as well as constructed-response tests measure these skills. To investiga te the credibility of such assertions, I constructed the exams for two measurement classes as half multiple choice and half constructed resp onse; the exams contained equal numbers of items in each format writte n for the knowledge, comprehension, application, and analysis levels o f Bloom's taxonomy. A pattern of generally high disattenuated correlat ions between multiple-choice and constructed-response measures within each taxonomic level was found, indicating that the two formats measur e similar constructs at different levels of complexity. Factor analysi s corroborated these interpretations.