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Cited by 313

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 24 of the 24 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Improving the fairness of multiple-choice questions: a literature review

McCoubrie, Paul·2004·Medical Teacher

Abstract

The ubiquity of multiple-choice questions (MCQs) results from their efficiency and hence reliability. Cognitive knowledge assessed by MCQ predicts and correlates well with overall competence and performance but examinees and examiners alike frequently perceive MCQ-based testing as 'unfair'. Fairness is akin to defensibility and is an increasingly important concept in testing. It is dependent on psychometric adequacy, diligence of construction, attention to consequential validity and appropriate standard setting. There is a wealth of evidence that extended matching questions are the fairest format but MCQs should always be combined with practical assessments, as written testing emphasizes learning from written sources.

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Metadata

Authors
McCoubrie, P.
Venue
Medical Teacher
Published
2004-12
Volume
26
Issue
8
Pages
709-712
ISSN
  • 0142-159X (ISSN-L)
  • 1466-187X
OpenAlex
W2077630385
Cited by
313
References
24
FWCI
4.15
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Improving the fairness of multiple-choice questions: a literature review. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1080/01421590400013495
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McCoubrie, P. (2004). Improving the fairness of multiple-choice questions: a literature review. Medical Teacher. https://doi.org/10.1080/01421590400013495

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.