How many answer choices should a multiple-choice question have?
Three is usually enough: one right answer and two wrong answers that a student who has not learned it might really choose. A large review of 80 years of research on multiple-choice tests concluded that three options are generally the best number. A fourth or fifth choice that nobody picks adds reading time and no information.
Asked by teachers, answered by Peabody's editors. Checked .
The review is Michael Rodriguez's 2005 meta-analysis in Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice. Its point is about the quality of the wrong answers. Most extra choices are ones students rule out at a glance, so they do not make the question harder, they only make it longer.
A good wrong answer is a mistake a real student makes. For 7 × 6, that is 48 or 36, a neighboring fact, rather than 3. For a word meaning, it is a meaning that sounds close, rather than a silly one.
Three choices also suit younger readers, who have less to read on each question, and they fit more questions on a page.
In the quiz maker
- Every multiple-choice question has three boxes.
- For math facts, the wrong answers are the near misses Peabody's practice games use.
- For your own pasted questions, the maker takes the wrong answers from your other answers, so they are the same kind of thing as the right one.
- If it can't find two different wrong answers for a question, that question prints with a line to write on, and the maker says so.
Tools that help
- Quiz maker: Three boxes per question, with wrong answers chosen to be believable.
- What the quiz bank holds: Every question the maker can draw on, by skill and grade.