ABSTRACT
Objective tests often present learners with a correct answer hidden among distracting incorrect answers or possibilities. Those answering questions will be ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, and marking – which may be undertaken electronically by technologies recognising the graphite of a pencil mark in the appropriate box, identifying a mouse click in an appropriate area of a computer screen or accepting the presence of the correctly matching word(s) in a ‘fill-in-the-blank’ candidate response – will be standardised, removing the possibility of one examiner seeing merit in a response and another disagreeing. Objective tests may be appropriate in instances where the memorisation of facts and figures is essential, but they may also be deployed in instances where, by applying their knowledge and understanding, test candidates can logically identify an answer, sometimes by systematically discounting the alternatives. True/false and multiple-choice questions are very common forms of objective tests.
