Open-ended versus multiple-choice response formats--it does make a difference for diagnostic purposes

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of response format—open-ended (OE) versus multiple-choice (MC)—on the diagnosis of examinee misconceptions in a procedural task. A test in fraction addition arithmetic was administered to 285 eighth-grade students, 148 of whom responded to the OE version of the test and 137 to the MC version. The two datasets were compared with respect to the underlying structure of the test, the number of different error types, and the diagnosed sources of misconception (bugs) reflected in the response patterns. The overall results indicated considerable differences between the two formats, with more favorable results for the OE format. The effect of item format on examinee responses has been studied extensively in the past decade. The equivalence of open-ended (OE) items (also known as free-response or recall items) and multiple- choice (MC)items(also known as recognition items) has addressed by psychometricians and cognitive psychologists. From an information-processing point of view, different models for the two formats have been suggested (e. g., Bender, 1980). The commonly held view suggests that recall items require examinees to both search for and retrieve information, whereas recognition items require them only to discriminate among the presented information