My multiple answer question rant.

[Fermin Hernandez, ADN, ASN, RN]

The recent trend in nursing education is the use of multiple answer questions on standard test formats. These are often used in an effort to prepare students for the questions when they appear on boards. This in itself is not bad, but the logic behind scoring them is often flawed.

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1. They are designed for computerized adaptive testing. The dirty little secret you’ll never hear is that these questions have a high enough difficulty level that you will not likely need to answer many correct to pass boards.

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2. They are really 4 questions or more for 1 point. When you need 80% or more to pass a test, these questions skew the difficulty curve over what the program probably intends.

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Multiple answer questions should be graded as partial credit or extra credit when they appear on a standard test.

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The reply that the NCLEX does not award partial credit is invalid because the NCLEX is not graded on a concrete point scale, and do to its very nature can evaluate student performance without partial points. Comparing the two systems of testing is apples to oranges logic.

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My grades are good, but I think it is in Nursing's best interest if tests use these questions more wisely.

[canoehead, BSN, RN]

What?

[kgh31386, BSN, MSN, RN]

Lol at the "what" comment. I don't agree with them bein counted as extra credit or partial credit. They're no harder than the rest of the questions except a lot of ppl get psyched out or second guess themselves. The NCLEX doesn't make all multiple answer questions higher level. The format of the question doesn't determine the difficulty. I think they're fine. If a teacher wants you to know more than one thing related to a topic or warning signs for a condition, then they make a question that involves all those things. Fair game

[nursel56]

What?

Ha- I was going to put. . . "huh?" You beat me to it!

[tfleuter, BSN, RN]

Ok, once I used my reading skills and realized you were talking about multiple answer questions and not multiple choice questions, your post made a little more sense. I don't care for those type of questions either, but I don't see a problem with using them in testing. I had an anatomy instructor who loved to format his questions with 3 differnt choices (a, b, c) followed by a d) 2 of the above or e) all the above or f) none of the above. Those quetions always made me second guess myself and drive me batty!

[SweetOldWorld, BSN, RN]

You have a very interesting point. A lot of research has gone into computer adaptive tests, but I don't know how that translates into paper tests. The two are very different.

The recent trend in nursing education is the use of multiple answer questions on standard test formats. These are often used in an effort to prepare students for the questions when they appear on boards. This in itself is not bad, but the logic behind scoring them is often flawed.

.

.

1. They are designed for computerized adaptive testing. The dirty little secret you'll never hear is that these questions have a high enough difficulty level that you will not likely need to answer many correct to pass boards.

.

.

2. They are really 4 questions or more for 1 point. When you need 80% or more to pass a test, these questions skew the difficulty curve over what the program probably intends.

.

.

Multiple answer questions should be graded as partial credit or extra credit when they appear on a standard test.

.

.

The reply that the NCLEX does not award partial credit is invalid because the NCLEX is not graded on a concrete point scale, and do to its very nature can evaluate student performance without partial points. Comparing the two systems of testing is apples to oranges logic.

.

.

My grades are good, but I think it is in Nursing's best interest if tests use these questions more wisely.