Guidelines for Writing Multiple-Choice Questions in Radiology Courses

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Abstract
Objective evaluation of students frequently includes the utilization of multiple-choice test questions. Due to constraints on faculty time, however, the writing of these questions is usually completed quickly and somewhat haphazardly. The guidelines contained in this article were written to help radiologists produce better test questions for the purpose of improving the evaluation of clerkship students. The guidelines include choosing an item that is worth testing and has one definite answer, asking a single, clearly formulated question, avoiding true-false stems, being concise when writing the question, avoiding the use of negatives in the stem, avoiding using "all of the above" or "none of the above" as a response, avoiding subtle clues toward the keyed answer or away from the distractors, avoiding one-word definitions as responses, and placing the responses in logical or numerical order. A definition of terms used in the educational literature and a discussion of a quantitative evaluation of test questions are included.

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