TRUE‐FALSE QUESTIONS: an appraisal Available to Purchase

In its simplest form the true‐false question is a specific instance of a group of questions in which the pupil is asked to choose from a pair of contrasted or opposed qualities, eg yes/no, true/false, possible/impossible, same/different, etc. However, the true‐false technique can be extended so that the pupil is asked to choose from a range of graded responses such as ‘likely to be true’, ‘true’, ‘likely to be false’, ‘false’, ‘don't know’, etc. This inevitably brings the true‐false item close in format to the multiple choice question but, as Hedges points out, the relationship of the various possible responses to each other shows the question to be a derivative of the true‐false technique. Another variation of this technique might ask the pupil to identify the word of phrase which makes false or incorrect an otherwise true or correct statement, and additionally to correct the original statement by supplying the correcting word or phrase.