Types, How to construct, advantages, Disadvantages, Suggestions, Bluffing

1. ESSAY TYPE
QUESTIONS

2. • "A test item which requires a response composed by the
examinee, usually in the form of one or more sentences, of
a nature that no single response or pattern of responses
can be listed as correct, and the accuracy and quality of
which can be judged subjectively only by one skilled or
informed in the subject."
Stalnaker, 1951
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3. • Essay test is a test that requires the student to structure a
long written response up to several paragraphs.
William W and Stephen G J,1990
• An essay test presents one or more questions or other tasks
that require extended written responses from the person
being tested.
Robert LE and David AF
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4. When to use Essay type questions ?
• To assess student’s understanding of subject’s content
• To assess student’s ability to reason with their knowledge
of a subject
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5. • To measure students’ ability to select; organize; integrate; relate;
and evaluate related ideas as a whole, and demonstrate complete
understanding of complex learning objectives by applying facts and
principles or interpreting cause-effect relationships.
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6. • Essay questions are divided into two
major types, depending upon the
amount of freedom given to student
to organize his ideas and write
answers
1) Extended response
2) Restricted Response
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8. Extended response
• No restriction is placed on the student as to the points he or
she will discuss and the type of organization the student will
use.
Example
a) Describe the health status of India suggested by different
health committees constituted from time to time in India ?
b)Explain the role of nurse in the health care team?
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9. Extended response
• Extended response items pave the way for more
organization, creativity and depth of knowledge.
• They can be used to assess higher-levels of Bloom’s
taxonomy such as in describing application of a set of
principles,explaining cause and effect relationships,
formulating conclusions, or to produce, organize, and
express ideas
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10. Extended response
An extended response of essay type questions permits the
student to demonstrate the ability to
• Recall factual knowledge
• Evaluate their factual knowledge
• Organize their ideas
• Present their ideas in a logical , coherent fashion.
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11. Restricted Response
• In restricted response the student is more limited and restricted and
student will have less scope because the student is specifically told
context in which his/her answer is to be made.
• Eg; Describe in not more than 100 words ,the recommendation made
by the health survey and development committee with regard to
improvement of health care delivery system in India ?
• This type of question tend to be more objective while the extended
type questions tend to be more subjective.
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12. • Restricted response, also referred to as short answer questions, are
organized in a manner that specifies or limits student responses.
• They typically assess learning objectives at the lower levels of Bloom’s
taxonomy and require students to list, define, or describe
• The restricted response question usually limits both the content and
the response
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13. Key terms and types of essays
Key term
List
Arrange
Select
Describe
Discuss
Explain
Compare
Outline
Interpret
Criticize
Formulate new problems or
procedures
Type Essay
Restrictive
Restrictive
Restrictive
Both
Extended
Both
Both
Restrictive
Extended
Extended
Extended
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14. How should these Questions be constructed
1. Questions should be clear & specific & exact limit should be set
2. Avoid: - - What do you think?
- What is in your opinion?
- Discuss?
3. Instead use: - Enlist, Enumerate or Define,
• - Compare & Contrast,
• - State your reasons,
• - Describe ( acceptable)
4. Match the question to specific learning objective. Communicate clearly to the
students what is expected.
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15. How should these Questions be constructed
5. Use simple, clear and straight forward language
6. No options- and better comparison, if options they should be from
same topic and should match the difficulty level.
7. In "Write briefly..." type of questions qualify how briefly into number
of words or lines of standard paragraphs.
8. Scoring system: Split the total marks allotted to each part of the
question topic. May be indicated in the paper (e.g ).
9. Consider using several narrowly focused items rather than one broad
item
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16. Traditional Unstructured Essay type
Question
• Discuss Pathology of Thalassemias. (10 marks)
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17. Structured Essay type Questions
• Differ from unstructured essay questions in the freedom regarding
scope and nature of answer.
• Framed in such a way that the student is provided considerable
guidance regarding points to be included in the answer.
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18. Traditional Unstructured Essay type Question
• Discuss Pathology of Thalassemias. (10 marks)
Structured Essay type Questions
• Write an essay on Thalassemias , focusing on its classification,
molecular basis, clinical manifestations and laboratory diagnosis
(2+2+3+3)
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19. Advantages
• Tests the ability to communicate in writing ; depth of knowledge and
understanding.
• It is relatively easier to prepare and administer.
• It emphasises on the integration and application of thinking and
problem solving skills.
• The student can have free to communicate, his/her ability for
independent thinking.
• It can improve writing skills.
• It requires short time for the teacher to prepare the test and
administer.
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20. Advantages
• The student can demonstrate her ability to organize ideas and express
them effectively in a logical and coherent fashion.
• It is more economical to use essay type tests than objective type.
• It can be successfully employed for all the school subjects.
• The mental processes like logical thinking ,critical reasoning ,
systematic presentation can be best developed.
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21. Disadvantages
• Essay type possesses relatively low validity and reliability because of the factors like:
1. Contaminated by extraneous factors like spelling, good handwriting,coloured writing, neatness,
grammar, and length of the answer.
2. Biased judgment by previous impressions.
3. Mood of examiner
4. First impression
5. Improper comparison of answer of different students (Bright and dull).
6. Ambiguous wording of questions may be misinterpreted results in guessing and bluffing on the part of
the students.
• Lack of objectivity.
• Provides little useful feedback.
• Takes long-time to score.
• Subjectivity of scoring.
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22. Modified Essay Question (MEQ)
• Problem solving type of essay question.
• A short history is given to the student, based on which questions are
asked.
• Requires the student to apply what he has learnt, in the context of a
given situation.
• The format has questions closely resembling a series of short answer
questions than an essay question.
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23. Modified Essay Question (MEQ)
• A 4 year old child presents with H/o lethargy, lack of play for 2 months
, bouts of fever for last 15 days. On physical examination , his axillary
and inguinal lymph nodes were found enlarged. He had mild
hepatosplenomegaly.
Q1. What are possible causes of this type of presentation?
Q2. Which investigation would you advise first and why?
Q3. What investigations will you order to arrive at the diagnosis ?
Q4. If the diagnosis is confirmed what shall be the management
options ?
(2+2+2+2)
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24. Principles of Preparing Essay type test
• Do not give too many lengthy questions.
• The limits of areas and the behaviour which you want should be
clearly mentioned.
• Words should be simple ,unambiguous and carefully selected.
• According to the level of student, difficulty and complexity items has
to be selected.
• Avoid phrases e.g. ‘Discuss briefly’
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25. Grading
• Essay is a performance based test, there are several components to
consider including the initial task itself constructed by the writer,
submitted by the examinee, and then graded by the rater(s), using a
rating/grading system
• The first step in grading is selecting a grading system which may be
predetermined during test item construction.
• Grading essays falls into two types: holistic/global and analytic
grading.
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26. RUBRIC
• A rubric is an assessment tool that clearly indicates achievement
criteria across all the components of any kind of student work, from
written to oral to visual.
• The Rubric is your ideal answer for what an Essay or paper should be
like
• The Rubric makes your expectations clear to the students
• Helps students evaluate the quality of their own work.
• Improves the consistency and speed of grading
• It can be used for marking assignments, class participation, or overall
grades.
• There are two types of rubrics: holistic and analytical.
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27. Holistic Rubrics
• The rater will read for an overall impression, for both the content as
well as the quality of the writing, and then translate his or her
impressions into a score or letter grade
• With a holistic rubric the rater assigns a single score (usually on a 1 to
4 or 1 to 6 point scale) based on an overall judgment of the student
work.
• Many researchers have argued that holistic grading focuses on too
much on what the writer does well rather than on areas of weakness,
and therefore does not provide for diagnostic information.
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28. Analytic scoring
• Method of grading that requires a separate score for each of a
number of aspects of a task or subcategories, such as grammatical
accuracy, vocabulary, idiomatic expression, organization, relevance,
coherence.
• The grader breaks each question down to its different parts and
identifies the major points covered by the students answer as
indicated on predetermined criteria.
• The grader will then assign points to each section depending on the
value they feel each deserves.
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29. Suggestions for the essay test
• Restrict the use of essay questions to those learning outcomes that
cannot be satisfactorily measured by objective items.
• Formulate questions that will call forth the behaviour specified in the
learning outcomes. E.g. Compare the following two methods……..
State the question clearly and precisely and make clear what
information the answer should contain.
• Indicate the approximate time limit for each question.
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30. • The question should clearly indicate the significance of each part so
that students may determine the time to be devoted to each part:
This can be done by dividing the question into component parts and
offering marks according to the significance.
Eg; a 15 marks essay question on nursing management of cirrhosis of
liver can be stated as ,
I. Define cirrhosis of liver (2m)
II. Briefly explain the medical management(5m)
III. Explain the nursing management of a patient with cirrhosis of
liver(8m).
• Avoid the use of optional questions. If students answer different
questions it is obvious that they are taking different tests and so the
common basis for evaluating their achievement is lost.
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31. Suggestions for scoring an essay answer
• Prepare an outline of the expected answer in advance- This scoring
includes characteristics of answer to be evaluated and the amount of
marks to be allotted to each.(preparing a scoring key).
• Use the scoring method which is more appropriate (point method or
the rating method)- there are two common methods of scoring essay
questions.
• With the point method each answer is compared with the ideal
answer in the scoring key and a given number of points is assigned
according to the adequacy of the answer.
• With rating method each paper is placed in one of a number of pile as
the answer is read. These piles represents the degree of quality and
determine the marks assigned to each answer.
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32. • Decide how to handle factors that are irrelevant to the learning outcomes
being measured:
Several factors influence the evaluation of answers to questions include
handwriting, spelling ,sentence structure ,punctuation and neatness.
• We should make an effort to keep such factors from influencing our
judgement and make a separate score for written expression or for the
specific factors.
• Evaluate all the answers to one question before going to the next one:
One way to minimize this is to score all answers to the first question , shuffle
the papers then score all answers to the next question .
• Evaluate the answers without looking at the students name : If important
decisions are to be based on the results obtain two or more independent
ratings:
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33. Bluffing: A common Scoring Problem
• It is possible for students to obtain higher scores in essay questions
than they deserve by the mean of clever bluffing.
• This is usually a combination of writing skill, general knowledge and
use of common tricks like; Write something for every question.
Stressing importance of topic.
• Name dropping.(The above view points are supported by the view
points of Florence nightingale)
• Agreeing with teachers opinion.
• Write on a related topic and “make it fit”.
• Writing in general terms that fit many situation.
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