Quality Multiple-Choice Test Questions: Item-Writing Guidelines and an Analysis of Auditing Testbanks

In accounting classes, publisher testbanks can be an important source of multiple-choice test questions. There has been, however, some criticism that textbook testbanks may be of low quality (Baldwin, 1984). To determine if testbank questions are well constructed and follow general guidelines for writing multiple-choice items, we examined 10 audit testbanks. Our analysis revealed that across all published testbanks examined, 75% of the questions had one or more guideline violations. Seventeen of the most cited rules for writing multiple-choice questions are given.