A comparison of free-response and multiple-choice forms of verbal aptitude tests

Abstract

Three verbal item types employed in standardized aptitude tests were administered in four formats-a conventional multiple-choice format and three formats requiring the examinee to produce rather than simply to recognize correct answers. For two item types-Sentence Completion and Antonyms-the response format made no difference in the pattern of correlations among the tests. Only for a multiple- answer open-ended Analogies test were any systematic differences found; even the interpretation of these is uncertain, since they may result from the speededness of the test rather than from its response requirements. In contrast to several kinds of problem-solving tasks that have been studied, discrete verbal item types appear to measure essentially the same abilities regardless of the format in which the test is administered.