Characteristics
There are various ways of structuring questions depending on the context, intent, and type of answer required. This essay discusses the characteristics and advantages of matching, multiple-choice, and short essay questions. Short essay questions prompt the examinee to respond to a question in a short composition, a few sentences, or a paragraph. Matching questions entail a list of items and their responses, where the learner should align each item to its correct response. Multiple-choice questions have a structure of a question and a list of choices from which a learner chooses the correct answer.
Short essay questions are based on a central idea, which the learner expounds in a few words. A learner presents an idea in the best way they can describe it with few words. Unlike essay questions, a short essay question requires a short but precise response. The quality of answers depends on how best the student answers the question (Gronlund, 1998). The skills of analyzing, evaluating, comparing, inferring, applying, and synthesizing get tested in short essay questions.
Matching questions have a special arrangement from other types of questions. It contains rows depending on the number of items, and two columns, where a list of concepts is on one side and their responses on the other side. The basis for matching is set, and the learner must follow them to match the items appropriately (Gronlund, 1998). Matching questions are appropriate for measuring the level of remembrance of the meaning of concepts by learners.
Multiple choice questions identify a learner’s level of understanding. They measure how a learner can select whatever is necessary from a question and apply it to answer the question. Multiple-choice questions have alternatives and a stem in their structure, with the stem being the problem statement and the alternatives being possible options for the stem (Gronlund, 1998). However, only one correct answer is in the list of choices, with the rest being distracters or wrong choices.
Advantages
The advantages of short essay questions are that they are easy to write, test a wide range of outcomes, discourage the interviewee from guessing, and are appropriate for the computation type of questions. Learners can practice their higher-level knowledge and skills in a limited way (Gronlund, 1998). It is easier for students to prepare for short essay questions than multiple-choice questions. They require shorter answers as opposed to long essays.
One strength of multiple-choice questions is that they can gauge learning outcomes from easy to complicated items. An examiner can formulate highly structured concepts and present them clearly for the learner to analyze. The pool of answers to multiple-choice questions provides a learner with diagnostic information (Gronlund, 1998). Moreover, compared to true-false questions, learners’ scores are less likely to get influenced by guessing in multiple-choice questions.
The advantage of matching items is that they make it easy for a learner to answer a question and hence are reliable and objective. Also, it requires a learner a little time to respond to matching questions. For examiners, matching items are easy to formulate, although they are not applicable in all forms of questions (Gronlund, 1998). Matching questions are efficient in that they contain responses, each fit for only one item.
In conclusion, all three types of questions serve special purposes in testing a learner’s abilities. They complement and supplement each other in developing the knowledge and skills of a student. Therefore, each structure of questions is as essential as the other and should be used together when assessing students. It would be inappropriate to leave some of the learner’s abilities untested after a study period, and thus examinations include all of them under one assessment.
References
Gronlund, N. E. (1998). Assessment of student achievement. Allyn & Bacon Publishing, Longwood Division, 160 Gould Street, Needham Heights, MA 02194-2310.