Making concepts of medical biochemistry by formulating distractors of multiple choice questions: growing mighty oaks from small acorns and #8217;

Abstract

Background: Multiple choice questions (MCQs) have routinely been used for formative evaluation and selection purposes. Enormous efforts are required to produce MCQs with plausible distractors, which test the understanding of concepts and problem solving abilities, without being trivial or giving clues to the correct answer. A thorough knowledge of the concerned topic is a prerequisite for the setter. Therefore in the present study, we observed the effect of formulating distractors of the given MCQs on understanding of a particular topic (“enzymes”) of medical biochemistry in undergraduate medical students. Materials and Methods: This study was carried out in the Department of Biochemistry in Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research, Puducherry, India, and involved 135 first year medical students. Students were divided into three groups based on their internal assessment (IA) performance: High performers with >75% IA (n = 44), medium performers with IA 60-75% (n = 48), and low performers with IA 0.05) compared with the first post-test. Although there was no statistical significance between the gain obtained by all the three groups, appreciable gain was observed for medium performers (+1.0698) and low performers (+0.755). Conclusion: Formulation of distracters of MCQs for a given stem enhanced the comprehension and performance of medical undergraduate students in medical biochemistry.