Written by Dr J.P. Nel, D. Com, D. Phil

After 37 years designing, developing and conducting assessment I am pretty sure that you can beat the multiple-choice questionnaire most of the time. Perhaps that is why some learning practitioners mark multiple tests negatively by subtracting one point for every question that you answered incorrectly. This, of course, goes against the principles of fairness and validity. The most popular multiple-choice tests include questions with four possible answers or dichotomous tests, where you need to answer either “yes or no” or “true or false”.

Even though the ten hints given here will help you to perform better with multiple-choice tests, the best hint remains to study. Studying will make it even easier for you to apply the ten hints.

1. Always answer the questions for which you know the answer first. That is why it is a good idea to study, even though you have nine more ways in which to identify the most likely answers.
2. Do not leave any questions unanswered. Guess if you don’t know the answer and cannot apply any of the other hints given here. And appeal if the assessor marks negatively.
3. If you are sure of the answer to a question, the answer to the next question will likely not be the same option. So, in the next question you will need to consider only three options. Bear in mind that assessors who know the hints might catch you out and put the right answer in the next question in the same place as the previous one.
4. In dichotomous questions, the answer is probably “no” or “false” if the words “always”, “never”, “just” or “only” appear in the question.
5. If you don’t know the answer to any of the dichotomous questions, guess “yes” or “true”. Assessors tend to use more “yes” or “true” questions, probably because they are easier to find in the book. For the same reason, if you don’t know any of the answers and if you can’t find any question for which the answer is definitely “no” or “false”, then mark all the questions for which you do not know the answer “yes” or “true”. You will not have all the answers right, but you will have most of the answers right.
6. Don’t change your answer to a question unless you are 100% certain that your initial answer was wrong. The first answer that comes to your mind is based on intuition, and intuition is often right.
7. If you don’t know the answer to a multiple-choice question, guess the longest option.
8. Trust the person who developed the test paper, else you will search for catches in the questions that are seldom there.
9. Know your assessor. If it is somebody who likes to impress with high fluted words, she or he will probably ask questions with which to show his or her superior knowledge. A pragmatic assessor will probably ask questions with simple and logical answers.
10. If two or more multiple-choice questions are asked with the same possible answers, you can rule out the one option in the questions following on that one, because it was the correct choice for the previous question.

There you have it. Just keep in mind that your assessor might know all these things and that he or she will then not leave you such hints to use. But then again, the exam wise learners will easily figure out if the assessor left hints or not.