Multiple Choice Scoring Rules

Information on Multiple Choice Scoring Options

Multiple Choice question have a variety of scoring options. These scoring options are found when you click the Gear button. Below is a brief description of each option.





Additive without Negation


Correct answers are scored with 1 point and distractors are scored 0.


Advantage: Partial credit is given, so if student A selects 2 out of 3 correct and student B selects 1 out of 3, they will get different scores. Selecting all the choices (correct choices and distractors) will be scored 100%.


Disadvantage: A student who identifies all correct answers will be getting a 100% score and a student who simply selects all the choices will also be getting 100% score.



All or None


A perfect score is given for selecting all correct answers; otherwise, the score is zero.


Advantage: SBAC Practice Tests have many multi-select multiple choice questions in both ELA and Math. Practically all follow the "all-or-none" scoring rule.


Disadvantage: A student who identifies all but one of the correct responses receives the same score (zero) as a student who cannot identify any of the correct answers. Clearly these two students have different knowledge of the content.


Additive with Negation Auto


The negative marks are calculated automatically based on a formula that takes into account only the number of correct answers. For example, define "answer-point" to be total question points divided by number of correct answers. If student chooses one of the correct answers, he gets one answer-point. If he selects two correct answers, he gets two answer-points, etc. However, if he chooses a select that is not correct, his points are reduced one answer-point. Eventually, the points for this question could reach 0.


Advantage: Partial credit is possible, can't simply select all options


Disadvantage: Teacher can't set the scoring points per answer differently, it is done by the formula.



Independent True/False


Give one answer point for each correct option selected and one answer point for each distractor not selected.


Advantage: Partial credit possible


Disadvantage: Simply selecting all choices will lead to some score being obtained proportional to (number of correct choices/total no of choices). Therefore, it works better if there are several distractors.


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Click the following link to access the Google Document for this solution:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uGhUXLXfNnhFS6BCkuBCk-JUJYIOv_zt0miWJtNS9rM/edit?usp=sharing





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