• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.643-650
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• 1998

In order to assess students' higher mental abilities, such as scientific inquiry thinking skills, the essay type items would be more adequate than the multiple choice itmes. However, due to the present condition in which a huge number of students take the examination at the same time, it is inevitable to use the multiple choice type. For this reason, it is necessary to develop a new type of multiple choice items which can reduce the disadvantages of the traditional multiple choice type and can achieve a similar level of validity as subjective type assessment. The three-tier multiple choice test items which can be used for a large sample of students and especially for scientific inquiry thinking abilities, are proposed and examined. The three-tier multiple choice test items asked firstly conclusion or the results of calculation or experimental apparatus, secondly the processes of calculation or of developing conclusion, thirdly asking relevant scientific concepts. For the item analysis, 1 point was given to the correct answer, while 0 point was given to the wrong one. The data were processed through the computer program developed in Turbo C 2.0 language with an IBM compatable personal computer. The average score in the sub-items asking for scientific concepts was lower than that in the sub-items asking for results or processes. The score of guessing by chance in the three-tier multiple choice items was only 0.13%, so that the probability of making correct answers by just guessing would be extremely low. The three-tier multiple choice items, even if they are objective items, are thought to assess thinking skills of the scientific inquiry meaningfully excluding the possibility of guessing by chance.