期刊名称：Physical Review ST Physics Education Research
电子版ISSN：1554-9178
出版年度：2006
卷号：2
期号：2
页码：20102
DOI：10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.2.020102
出版社：American Physical Society
摘要：The reliability and validity of professionally written multiple-choice exams have been extensively studied for exams such as the SAT, graduate record examination, and the force concept inventory. Much of the success of these multiple-choice exams is attributed to the careful construction of each question, as well as each response. In this study, the reliability and validity of scores from multiple-choice exams written for and administered in the large introductory physics courses at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign were investigated. The reliability of exam scores over the course of a semester results in approximately a 3% uncertainty in students’ total semester exam score. This semester test score uncertainty yields an uncertainty in the students’ assigned letter grade that is less than 1 3 of a letter grade. To study the validity of exam scores, a subset of students were ranked independently based on their multiple-choice score, graded explanations, and student interviews. The ranking of these students based on their multiple-choice score was found to be consistent with the ranking assigned by physics instructors based on the students’ written explanations ( r > 0.94 at the 95% confidence level) and oral interviews ( r = 0.94 − 0.09 0.06 ) .
