Assessment of Higher Ordered Thinking in Medical Education: Multiple Choice Questions and Modified Essay Questions

Abstract

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Background: Multiple choice questions and Modified Essay Questions are two widely used methods of assessment in medical education. There is a lack of substantial evidence whether both forms of questions can assess higher ordered thinking or not. Objective: The objective of this paper is to assess the ability of a well-constructed Multiple-Choice Question (MCQ) to assess higher ordered thinking skills as compared to a Modified Essay Questions (MEQ) in medical education. Methods: The medical education literature was searched for articles related to comparison between multiple choice questions and modified essay questions, looking for credible evidence for using multiple choice questions for assessment of higher ordered thinking. Results and Conclusion: A well-structured MCQ has the capacity to assess higher ordered thinking and because of many other advantages that this format offers. Multiple choice questions should be considered as a preferable choice in undergraduate medical education as literature shows that different levels of Bloom's taxonomy can be assessed by this assessment format and its use for assessing only lower ordered thinking i.e. recall of knowledge, is not very convincing.