Matching Items

Matching is a test item type where test takers can demonstrate their ability to connect ideas, themes, statements, numbers, expressions, or solutions with supporting evidence, definitions, equivalent expressions, and so forth. Elements of the item are traditionally presented in two columns or lists, and each element in one list is paired with at least one element from the other list. This entry further describes matching items, gives examples of several types of matching items, and discusses issues with scoring certain types of matching items.

Matching items have traditionally been a quick and efficient way to ask a series of related questions without being redundant. This item format is also very compact—two lists of 10 items take up far less paper than 10 individual multiple-choice questions—and is easy to lay out using even a basic word processing program. Because of the ease of both presentation and scoring, this is a common item type used in teacher-made classroom tests. From a more technical standpoint, an advantage of a matching item is that the test developer can obtain multiple responses about related content without compounding problems of local dependence.

For example, a test may ask two multiple-choice questions such as

• 1.
  Who was the first president of the United States?

  • A.
    Herbert Hoover
  • B.
    James Madison
  • C.
    Theodore Roosevelt
  • D.
    George Washington
• 2.
  Who was the fourth president of the United States?

  • A.
    John Adams
  • B.
    Thomas Jefferson
  • C.
    James Madison
  • D.
    George Washington

These items’ answer choices make the items locally dependent. If an examinee correctly chooses D or incorrectly chooses B for Question 1, that selection will change the probability of selecting response options C and D in Question 2. Specifically, if a test taker chose D for Question 1, then Question 2 effectively has only three answer choices because George Washington could not be first AND fourth president, giving a one in three chance of guessing correctly if the examinee didn’t know the early presidents. The corollary is that if a test taker chose B for Question 1, Question 2 again effectively has only three answer choices, but now the probability of guessing correctly is zero.

However, the problem of local dependence can be somewhat reduced by making a matching lines item. Matching lines is one possible format for questions of this type, where, for example, the examinee literally draws a line to connect a word in column A with its definition in column B, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 Simple Matching Lines Item

[Page 1026]In this item type, the stem is an imperative statement rather than a question and should clearly direct the examinee how to answer the question. Ideally, there are more elements in the possible answers column than there are elements to be matched. In the example shown in Figure 1, the question asks for the first five presidents but gives eight choices. This is to prevent test takers from responding correctly through process of elimination rather than based on content knowledge.

However, this item format often requires hand scoring and is subject to errors in scoring depending on the perceptual acuity of both test taker and test scorer, the manual dexterity of the test taker, and the font size and page layout.

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