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Completion or Fill-in-the-Blank Test Items - Coggle Diagram
Completion or Fill-in-the-Blank Test Items
Good for
Knowledge levels
Recall and memorization
of facts
Advantages & Disadvantages
Disadvantages
Difficult to assess higher levels of learning
Difficult to construct so that the desired response is clearly indicated
May overemphasize memorization of facts
Scoring is time consuming
Questions may have more than one correct answer
Takes more time for students to complete them
Advantages
Minimizes guessing
Encourages more intensive study. Student must know the answer vs. recognizing the answer.
Can usually provide an objective measure of student achievement or ability
Good for
who, what, where, when
content
Characteristics
Especially useful in assessing mastery of factual information when a specific word or phrase is important to know.
Requires the student to answer a question or to finish an incomplete statement by filling in a blank with the correct word or phrase
More difficult to score than forced-choice items and scoring often must be done by the test writer since more than one answer may have to be considered correct (Completion without a word bank of possible words that will fill in the blanks)
Tend to test only rote, repetitive responses and may encourage a fragmented study style since memorization of bits and pieces will result in higher scores
Suggestions for Writing Completion Test Items
Omit only significant words from the statement.
Do not omit so many words from the statement that
the intended meaning is lost.
Avoid obvious clues to the correct response.
Be sure there is only one correct response.
Avoid grammatical clues to the correct response.
If possible, put the blank at the end of a statement
rather than at the beginning.
Is Short Answer the Same Thing?
With completion questions the response is usually one or two words that fit on a line provided by the tester
Short answer questions may require one sentence or even a paragraph to fully answer the question.