Are Faculty Members of Paramedics Able to Designed Accurate Multiple Choice Questions?

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES- Multiple choice questions (MCQ) are one of the assessment instruments in medical sciences. The overall aim of this study was to perform qualitative and quantitative analysis of the multiple choice question MCQ provided by the professors of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences-Faculty of Medicine in the academic year 2011-2012.MATERIALS & METHODS- In this descriptive-analytic study, 37 tests of the Faculty of Medicine were analyzed. Quantitative data included difficulty coefficient, discrimination coefficient, whole credibility test, standard deviation of the questions, and the qualitative data consisted of taxonomic percent I, II and III, percentage of questions with no structural problems. The data were analyzed using SPSS software version 20.00 while T-test and chi-square test were applied.RESULTS- The average validity coefficient of the total tests (KR-20) was measured as 0.63, the average difficulty coefficient as 0.58, the average discrimination coefficient as 0.19. The average percentage of the questions without structural problems as 37.1%; all of which were in the acceptable range. The mean Taxonomy I percentage of the questions was38.36% (±11.31), Taxonomy II percentage of the questions was 42.46% (±15.51) with no significant difference in the entire tests. Average percentage of questions with taxonomy III was 20.73% (±12.83) for which independent t-test showed significant difference in the total tests (P=0.00). Average percentage of questions without structural problems was measured as 55.23% (±13.23) for which there was a significant difference in the total tests when independent t-test was used (P=0.041).CONCLUSION- Considering the average validity of the whole test, the mean difficulty coefficient and Taxonomy indexes I, II and III, the tests designed by the professors of the Faculty of Allied Science are within an a acceptable standard range.