• Si-Mui Sim and Raja Isaiah Rasiah.
• Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. debrasim@um.edu.my
• Ann Acad Med Singap. 2006 Feb 1; 35 (2): 67-71.

IntroductionThis paper reports the relationship between the difficulty level and the discrimination power of true/false-type multiple-choice questions (MCQs) in a multidisciplinary paper for the para-clinical year of an undergraduate medical programme.Materials And MethodsMCQ items in papers taken from Year II Parts A, B and C examinations for Sessions 2001/02, and Part B examinations for 2002/03 and 2003/04, were analysed to obtain their difficulty indices and discrimination indices. Each paper consisted of 250 true/false items (50 questions of 5 items each) on topics drawn from different disciplines. The questions were first constructed and vetted by the individual departments before being submitted to a central committee, where the final selection of the MCQs was made, based purely on the academic judgement of the committee.ResultsThere was a wide distribution of item difficulty indices in all the MCQ papers analysed. Furthermore, the relationship between the difficulty index (P) and discrimination index (D) of the MCQ items in a paper was not linear, but more dome-shaped. Maximal discrimination (D = 51% to 71%) occurred with moderately easy/difficult items (P = 40% to 74%). On average, about 38% of the MCQ items in each paper were "very easy" (P > or =75%), while about 9% were "very difficult" (P <25%). About two-thirds of these very easy/difficult items had "very poor" or even negative discrimination (D < or =20%).ConclusionsMCQ items that demonstrate good discriminating potential tend to be moderately difficult items, and the moderately-to-very difficult items are more likely to show negative discrimination. There is a need to evaluate the effectiveness of our MCQ items.

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