Abstract:
Objectives: To carry out the detailed analysis of Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) asked in the preliminary examination of 3rd year physiotherapy.
Methods: MCQs for the preliminary examinations of three years were analysed in detail about their difficulty index, discrimination index, distractor performance, types & percentage of MCQs in each question paper, their relationship with each other.
Results: Qualitative analysis indicates that out of 120 items, only 28% (n=34) were of interpretation type and 36% the problem solving. Mean difficulty index was 61.7± 20.1 and discrimination index was 26.8± 15.8. The proportion of items containing 0, 1, 2, and 3 functioning distractors was 8.3%, 28.1%, 44.8%, and 18.8% respectively. 36% of problem solving type plus 27% interpretation type of questions constitutes fairly significant number of higher cognitive domain questions. The wide scatter of item discrimination values for questions with a similar level of difficulty may reflect that some extent of guessing practices is done by the students.
Conclusion: Results of this study shows the quality of MCQs still needs to be enhanced may it be the type of MCQ, or difficulty or discrimination index or distracter performance so that this tool can be effectively used for the assessment.
Keywords: MCQs, assessment methods, item analysis