Penn State Learning Design Community Hub

Overview

Characteristics of true/false questions

• Used to measure ability to identify whether statements of facts, principles, generalizations, relationships, or evaluative statements are correct
• Can be factual or can be a thought question that requires reasoning
• Can be used in most disciplines
• Used to quickly poll a class as an introduction to a discussion or determine knowledge of topic

Example - good

The true/false item is also called an alternative-response item.

a. True

b. *False

The true-false item, which is favored by all test experts, is also called an alternative-response item.

a. True

b. *False

Main error: The question contains two ideas and therefore is confusing.

Advantages of true/false questions

• Quite easy to write
• Easy to score
• Scoring is objective
• More information is sampled from a lot of content

Disadvantages

• Measures only low level of learning - facts, knowledge, comprehension
• Need a larger number of items to distinguish stronger and weaker
  knowledge levels.
• Students have a 50 percent chance of being correct, just by chance.
• May be perceived as an unfair judgment of learning
• Encourages guessing since there are only two alternatives.

Special thanks to The Schreyer Institute for their contributions to these documents.