Are multiple-choice tests “objective”?
Test-makers often promote multiple-choice tests as “objective.” This is because there is no human judgement in the scoring, which usually is done by machine. However, humans decide what questions to ask, how to phrase questions, and what “distractors” to use. All these are subjective decisions that can be biased in ways that unfairly reward or harm some test-takers. Therefore, multiple-choice tests are not really objective. Any uses of test results involve additional human decisions, including such things as setting a “cut-off” or passing-level score on a test. Some people also claim multiple-choice tests avoid the subjective views of any one teacher, who may be biased or have low expectations. This is true, but there are many ways to address these problems, such as by having independent groups of teachers and others review student essays, projects, portfolios or other more comprehensive forms of assessment.
