The Effect of Education on Improving Multiple-choice Questions Designing based on Millman Structural Criteria

Multiple-choice questions are the most common tests to assess the students in medical science fields. These tests are highly objective and reliable but their structure and content validity have always been focused by the researchers and familiarity with designing questions based on the standards for the structural principles is highly significant. Thus, the goal this study pursues is to analyze the effect of education on multiple-choice questionsʹ structural validity of the Basic Sciences Faculty Members of Mazandaran Medical Science University. This study is semi-experimental in the Basic Sciences masters group in two groups as control & case. The pre-& post-educational intervention groupsʹ questions have been reviewed based on Millman reliable –valid checklist with the structural errors criterion. Data have been analyzed by statistical software SPSS V.16 and Mann-Whitney U & Wilcoxon non-parametric tests at significant level 0.05. The 1800 questions results analysis revealed that before the educational intervention, there was no meaningful difference between the tuition-paid masters (non-faculty members) and the newly-employed ones. But after the educational intervention, there was a meaningful difference in the questions of the newly-employed masters, in most of the checklist structural items, between the questions of the tuition-paid masters and the newly-employed faculty staff. also analyzing pre-&post-educational intervention in experiment group has showed a significant difference and scores increase after intervention in all of the checklist structural criteria. After educational intervention, a remarkable improvement has been observed in terms of designing standard questions based on the structural criteria. Therefore, educating all of the faculty members at the when they stat working is proposed for creating and improving quality.