Multiple Choice

Multiple choice is a form of assessment in which respondents are asked to select the best possible answer (or answers) out of the choices from a list. The multiple choice format is most frequently used in educational testing, in market research, and in elections, when a person chooses between multiple candidates, parties, or policies. Multiple choice testing is particularly popular in the United States.

Although E. L. Thorndike developed an early multiple choice test, Frederick J. Kelly was the first to use such items as part of a large scale assessment. While Director of the Training School at Kansas State Normal School (now Emporia State University) in 1915, he developed and administered the Kansas Silent Reading Test. Soon after, Kelly became the third Dean of the College of Education at the University of Kansas. The first all multiple choice, large scale assessment was the Army Alpha, used to assess the intelligence of World War I military recruits.

The items of a multiple choice test are often colloquially referred to as "questions," but this is a misnomer because many items are not phrased as questions. For example, they can be presented as incomplete statements or mathematical equations. Thus, the more general term "item" is a more appropriate label. Items are stored in an item bank.