Developing Distractors for Mathematics Multiple Choice Items: A Literature Review

Abstract

Introduction: This article aimed at digging deep into distractors used for mathematics multiple-choice items. The quality of distractors may be more important than their number and the stem in a multiple-choice question. Little attention is given to this aspect of item writing especially, mathematics multiple-choice questions. This article provides an engaging but succinct literature review on the development of plausible distractors for mathematics multiple choice items.

Keywords

• distractors
• errors
• mathematics
• misconceptions and stem