Abstract
BackgroundMultiple choice questions, used in medical school assessments for decades, have many drawbacks such as hard to construct, allow guessing, encourage test-wiseness, promote rote learning, provide no opportunity for examinees to express ideas, and do not provide information about strengths and weakness of candidates. Directly asked, directly answered questions like Very Short Answer Questions (VSAQ) are considered a better alternative with several advantages.ObjectivesThis study aims to compare student performance in MCQ and VSAQ and obtain feedback.from the stakeholders.MethodsConduct multiple true-false, one best answer, and VSAQ tests in two batches of medical students, compare their scores and psychometric indices of the tests and seek opinion from students and academics regarding these assessment methods.ResultsMultiple true-false and best answer test scores showed skewed results and low psychometric performance compared to better psychometrics and more balanced student performance in VSAQ tests. The stakeholders’ opinions were significantly in favour of VSAQ.Conclusion and recommendationThis study concludes that VSAQ is a viable alternative to multiple-choice question tests, and it is widely accepted by medical students and academics in the medical faculty.
Highlights
Multiple choice questions, used in medical school assessments for decades, have many drawbacks such as hard to construct, allow guessing, encourage test-wiseness, promote rote learning, provide no opportunity for examinees to express ideas, and do not provide information about strengths and weakness of candidates
This study concludes that Very Short Answer Questions (VSAQ) is a viable alternative to multiple-choice question tests, and it is widely accepted by medical students and academics in the medical faculty
Student performance in tests It was observed that the student performance in Multiple True/False (MTF), Best Answer Questions (BAQ) and VSAQ was significantly higher in year-5 group compared to year-3 (p < 0.01)
Summary
Multiple choice questions, used in medical school assessments for decades, have many drawbacks such as hard to construct, allow guessing, encourage test-wiseness, promote rote learning, provide no opportunity for examinees to express ideas, and do not provide information about strengths and weakness of candidates. Discrimination index (DISi) in MCQ may be deceptive as good students may find them more difficult to answer, as the questions may be the authors’ opinions and not well-known facts [2, 15]. True-false MCQ may even have a negative effect on students, attributable to the false statements, which they might take home as true [10]. It appears that the demerits of MCQ are numerous and overwhelming, and there is strong backing for alternative instruments like directly asked, directly answered questions
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