FTCE Professional Education Practice Exam

For a thirty-minute examination, which type of test offers the best reliability and coverage of content?

1. True or false

2. Multiple-choice

3. Essay

4. Fill-in-the-blank

The correct answer is: Essay

The reasoning behind choosing multiple-choice as the best type of test for reliability and coverage of content in a thirty-minute examination lies in the structure and nature of multiple-choice questions. This format allows for a significant number of topics to be assessed within a limited timeframe, ensuring comprehensive coverage of the curriculum. Multiple-choice tests can include a wide range of content across different cognitive levels—from recall of facts to application and analysis—making them effective in measuring a broader spectrum of knowledge. Furthermore, they provide quantifiable results that can be easily analyzed, contributing to higher reliability in scoring. Since each question has a specific correct answer, the ambiguity associated with other formats, such as essays or fill-in-the-blank questions, is minimized. In contrast, essay questions typically require more time for both students to compose their thoughts and for educators to grade, making them less feasible within a constrained timeframe if comprehensive content coverage is desired. Similarly, fill-in-the-blank questions, while they can cover content efficiently, do not assess higher-order thinking as robustly as multiple-choice questions do. True or false questions may provide quick assessments but often lack depth and can lead to guessing, which decreases reliability. Overall, multiple-choice questions are ideally suited for a thirty-minute examination due to their ability to