Item Analysis of Multiple-Choice Questions in Teaching Prosthodontics

The aim of this study was to analyze multiple-choice questions used in teaching prosthodontics to dental students based on the items' distractor effectiveness and their difficulty and discrimination capacity. The overall goals were to assist the prosthodontics department in modifying its existing question bank and creating a set of prevalidated questions of known difficulty and discrimination capacity. The items selected for this study were from the three formative examinations in prosthodontics for fourth-year BDS students at Sinhgad Dental College and Hospital, Pune, Maharastra, India, during academic year 2011-12. As all the students' completed exams and scores were available, the task was to evaluate the efficacy of items already administered. Based on the item analysis of the questions, the following results were noted. None of the three examinations had items that were too difficult or defective. However, all three examinations had large percentages of easy items and many items had a low discrimination index. More than 60-70% of the items on all three examinations included ineffective distractors. All items therefore needed modifications based on their distractor effectiveness and difficulty and discrimination indices. After the study was completed, the results were discussed in a meeting with all teachers in the prosthodontics department and the test constructors, and suggestions were made with regard to improving the items for better evaluation of students.