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Don’t just close your eyes and point on a multiple-choice exam.
You’re sitting in a classroom taking a fire service, multiplechoice exam. You’re zipping along, answering every question— and then you get stuck. There are some questions for which choices A, B, C, and D all seem correct. There are others for which none of the choices seems correct. Then there are questions for which you just haven’t memorized enough information to give you a clue as to the answer. What should you do?
In every exam, the test constructor always manages to throw in a few items from left field, and you may gain some points by using an appropriate guessing strategy to help you answer those questions correctly. Of course, the best strategy is to study so you won’t have to guess. But there are some instances when guessing strategies will come in handy. There are pure guessing and educated guessing— and each has advantages.
But before we look at each method, let’s see how a multiple-choice question is put together.
Although there may be slight variations, the standard multiplechoice question consists of two basic parts. The first is the stem or preamble. This usually precedes the options and may consist of a description of a situation, a set of data, a formal question, or some combination of the three. The second part usually is a set of four or five options. One option correctly answers the question, and the rest act as distractors.
In a five-option, multiple-choice question, the probability of getting the correct answer purely by chance is 20 percent. In other words, if you were taking a 100question, multiple-choice examination and selected your answers purely by guessing, you’d get about 20 questions correct. For a four-option question, the chance of getting the correct answer purely by chance is 25 percent.
Now we can go on to the guessing strategies you can use to help increase your chances of answering more questions correctly. But as you’re reading, keep in mind that the research cited in this article was performed with college students and may not apply completely to civil service testing.
Pure guessing is probably one of the least successful guessing strategies. But you may have to use it if you run out of time and still have a few questions to answer. There are several forms of the pure guessing strategy.
The least-used option. This is one of the most popular, but also most unsuccessful, guessing methods. You make a choice based on two assumptions: 1) that the examiner attempts to have an approximately equal number of correct A, B, C, and D answers, and 2) that you’ve answered the rest of the questions correctly. If you’ve received consistently high marks in multiple-choice exams, you may benefit from this strategy as long as you know your exam has been balanced wth an equal number of correct A, B, C, and D answers.
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Use guessing strategies to help you choose the correct answer.
Dr. Mark A. Shatz, professsor of psychology at the University of Ohio at Zanesville, recently conducted a study of students taking multiple-choice tests. It’s interesting to note that when they employed the least-used-option method to answer questions taken from six introductory psychology test-item bank books (general psychology material that’s used as teachers’ guides and contains many multiple-choice questions), they were right less than the 25 percent of the time that would normally be expected through random guessing.
Choosing “C.” This is another guessing strategy you can use to answer those last few questions for which you just have no knowledge. “When in doubt, choose C,” the advice goes. The assumption behind this strategy is that, when constructing an exam, the examiner will frequently hide a correct answer between other distractors rather than place it as the first or last option. This would be particularly convenient with a five-option format, where option C lies directly in the middle.
In his study, Dr. Shatz found that test-takers using this strategy had a 27 percent correct-response rate. Although this percentage of correct answers is slightly higher than what’s expected by chance, it’s not statistically significant.
Selecting the longest option. This strategy comes from the assumption that, in making a correct statement, the examiner will often need more text to ensure the correct option is “better” than the distractors.
Again, Dr. Shatz’s study didn’t find any significant differences in the average number of correct answers between this strategy and random guessing. But in a similar study, Dr. James W. Kalat, professor of psychology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, found that by selecting the longest option, students answered correctly about 28 percent of the time. This is significantly better than would be expected with random guessing.
Educated guessing has proven to be somewhat more successful. As with pure guessing, there are several forms.
The process of elimination. When you’re taking a multiplechoice examination, you may try to answer the more difficult questions by eliminating the options that seem least correct. In fact, many test-takers have used this strategy by identifying incorrect choices by reading the options before reading the stem. This, of course, assumes the test-taker has some knowledge about the information asked for.
It’s a highly recommended strategy because once an option has been ruled out, the probability of choosing the correct answer increases. Eliminating one option in a four-option question increases your chances of choosing the correct answer to 33 percent. Eliminating a second option from the same question raises the chances of choosing the correct answer to 50 percent. Consider what would happen if, for example, you were able to correctly eliminate two options per question in a 100-item, multiple-choice exam. You could answer approximately 50 percent of the questions correctly even if you choose from the remaining answers purely by chance.
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Spotting clues and flaws. There may be clues or flaws within some of the options to help you decide which one is correct. One of these clues is the use of the words always and never. Although 1 haven’t found any systematic research on this particular flaw, such modifiers have long been suspected of indicating an incorrect option.
Other flaws include options that are more precise than the others, options that don’t follow either logically or grammatically from the stem, and options that are written in a different style from that of the other options and the stem. This is where knowing proper grammar and logic can sometimes help you choose the correct answer.
Convergence. Options that converge or intercept at one particular answer may be a clue. This occurs when specific information in some or all of the other options points to or centers around the correct option. Consider the following example:
- 10 and 15
- 10 and 20
- 10 and 25
- 15 and 25
Options A, B, and C start with the number 10, and C and D end with the number 25. Option C contains elements (including the order of its elements) that are in common with the rest of the options. In this situation, C is likely to be the correct answer.
Which strategy to select depends on many factors. You obviously can’t use the longest-option strategy when each option is of equal length or when each option contains numerals with an equal number of digits. When to follow the leastused-choice strategy depends on your past record in these types of exams and whether the examiner tends to balance the choices.
When you choose a guessing strategy, don’t base your choice on a mere guess. Try to learn about the composition of previous examinations for a given title in the municipality where you’ll be tested. If previous exams are available to the public, review them for certain patterns. For example, there may be a pattern in the number of times an item containing a certain peculiarity or flaw was the correct option, the number of times the unbalanced option was the correct answer, and so on. Such patterns can give you enough information to select the appropriate guessing strategy for the test you’re taking.
As you might expect, most examiners will go to great lengths to make sure that “trivial” details of an exam are controlled. Examiners will try to ensure that all correct options are balanced in terms of their length, grammatical structure, and style; that all options follow logically and grammatically with respect to the stem; and that there’s an equal balance of correct A, B, C, and D answers. But item writing is more of an art than a science, and there may be a lastminute rush to meet a deadline. So every test is likely to have some flaws that escaped the personnel examiner’s eagle eyes.
Remember, these guessing techniques are designed to help you out in a pinch. Studying is still the best strategy to use when you’re preparing for a fire service exam. It will increase your knowledge of the science of firefighting, and that’s the best way to improve your chances for a fast promotion.
Good luck on your next exam!
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