MCQ Full Form, Overview, History, Advantages, Drawbacks

The full form of MCQ is "Multiple Choice Question."

A Brief Overview of MCQs

Multiple Choice Questions, or MCQs, are an ideal means to assess students’ learning. These questions are an efficient and objective way of measuring the student's knowledge and are therefore a widely used and studied format.

History of Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs)

MCQs, in summary, are a means of quantifying intelligence, and they became an educational focus only in the 20th century.

The purpose of MCQs was to reduce or eliminate subjectivity and increase efficiency in evaluating the reading abilities of students. This brings us to the father of multiple-choice questions.

Frederick J. Kelly, the father of MCQs and the author of the Kansas Silent Reading Test, devised a system in 1914 wherein the subjectivity of testing was gouged out. He found that by eliminating subjectivity, he improved the efficiency of reading skills in students, which overall saved time and effort.

Even today, MCQs remain a popular exam format in several national tests as they are easy to grade and evaluate. However, evaluators prefer open-ended as well as closed-ended questions in their tests because it allows them to analyse the student's thought process as well as his or her knowledge, judgement, or problem-solving abilities.

Let us now take a look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of MCQs.

What are the Advantages of Multiple Questions?

The key benefits of multiple choice questions (MCQs) are as follows:

• They are quick and simple to answer.
• Evaluators can ask more questions.
• These are mobile-friendly if one wishes to take online tests.
• These are simple to analyse.
• Data is quantitative in nature and helps in quantitative research.
• does not require additional or unnecessary information for evaluation.

What are the Drawbacks of MCQs?

There are a few drawbacks to multiple-choice questions, which are:

• These are easy to manipulate, i.e., if there are only two options available, a respondent may be urged to choose an answer even if it does not relate to him or her.
• The data collected is quantitative in nature and therefore not relevant to qualitative research.
• Multiple-choice questions are time-consuming to design.

[wp-faq-schema title=" MCQ Full Form FAQs" accordion=1]