Manual for ESTRO Teachers

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8) The responses should be similar in length.
a) There is a tendency among item writers to make the correct answer the longest answer.
b) Astute candidates in examination technique may therefore be able to correctly guess the
correct answer on a disproportionate number of occasions.
9) When writing distractors, it is wise to avoid the use of superlatives such as "always" and "never"
a) Statements containing these items are highly likely to be incorrect and candidates will
discard these options thereby increasing the chances of correctly guessing the correct
answer.
10) Each distractor should be mutually exclusive and not overlapping.
a) Example: if a series of percentages is to be used for the responses, each range must be
unique to the response.
A. 5 - 20
B. 25 - 40
C. 45 - 60
D. 65 - 80
E. 85 - 100
b) If responses are overlapping, the candidate may not be able to determine the best answer
not because they do not know the answer, but because the answer is incorporated into
more than one response.
c) This may also lead to challenges of validity of the exam result by unsuccessful candidiates
who will argue more than one response is correct due to this overlap.
11) Avoid using “none of the above”, “all of the above”, as a response.
a) The “none of the above” response does not test what the candidate knows, but only that
he/she can recognize that the correct answer is not present.
b) The “all of the above” response is essentially an overlapping response, because it requires
the candidate to consider the responses in combination
c) Knowing that two are correct leads the astute candidate to “all of the above ” by default
without knowing the importance or correctness of the remaining responses.
12) To make distractors more plausible, use words that should be familiar to the examinee.