The Case for True-False Test Items

Many professors have serious doubts about the value of true-false test items as measures of educational achievement. They question whether such items are capable of testing the essence of educational achievement. They believe that true-false items are likely to be based mainly on trivial facts and to encourage rote learning of such facts. They see serious ambiguities in many of the items. Most damaging of all, in their opinion, is the high probability of correct response by blind guessing alone. Some who concede that good true-false test items can be written regard the task as much too demanding for a teacher of average ability. There is clearly some basis for these beliefs, but there is also reason to suspect that they tend to exaggerate the defects and limitations of true-false test items. Most of them can be attributed