Cloze Tests Revisited: Exploring Item Characteristics with Special Attention to Scoring Methods

This study examined the effects of item characteristics on cloze test performance. A particular focus of the study was to investigate the relationship between a number of cloze item characteristics and scoring methods. The item characteristics examined were: (a) content/function words, (b) parts of speech, (c) word frequency, (d) the number of occurrences of a word in the text, (e) alternative answers, (f) syntactic variation, (g) the amount of context, and (h) knowledge base. A total of 255 Japanese university students participated and were randomly assigned 1 of 4 sets of cloze tests. The data revealed variations in the results of cloze tests attributable to different scoring methods. The study showed the complex effects of item characteristics and scoring methods on test performance, both in terms of item difficulty and discrimination. These findings have important implications for the use of cloze tests.