-
Distracters
based on common student errors or misconceptions are very effective.
One technique for compiling distracters is to ask students to respond
to open-ended short answer questions, perhaps as formative assessments.
Identify which incorrect responses appear most frequently and use
them as distracters for a multiple choice version of the question.
-
Correct
statements that do not answer the question are often strong distracters.
-
Avoid
using ALWAYS and NEVER in the stem as testwise students are likely
to rule such universal statements out of consideration.
-
Do not
create distracters that are so close to the correct answer that they
may confuse students who really know the answer to the question. "Distracters
should differ from the key in a substantial way, not just in some
minor nuance of phrasing or emphasis." (Isaacs
1994)
-
Provide
a sufficient number of distracters.
You will probably choose to use three, four or five alternatives in
a multiple choice question. Until recently, it was thought that three
or four distracters were necessary for the item to be suitably difficult.
However a 1987 study by Owen
& Freeman suggests that three choices are sufficient (Brown
1997). Clearly the higher the number of distracters, the less likely
it is for the correct answer to be chosen through guessing (providing
all alternatives are of equal difficulty.)
