EMPLOYMENT PSYCHOLOGY 
are “From New York to Chicago is — —— miles,” and 
“How far is it from New York to Chicago? — miles.” 
The response is narrowly limited by the meaning of the 
context, and the place for recording it is specifically indi- 
cated. 
Still greater constraint is placed on the response when 
instead of allowing the subject to state or write his response, 
he is asked to indicate which of certain responses is the cor- 
rect one. If the number of alternatives is more than two, 
the test is called a multiple choice test. An example is: 
«From New York to Chicago is 253 540 912 1164 miles. 
(Underline the correct figure.)” 
The greatest constraint is placed on the response when 
the subject is required to choose between two alternatives, 
as “From New York to Chicago is 1,061 miles. True False 
(Underline one).” 
As constraint is placed on responses the objectivity of the 
examination increases, especially as regards scoring, but 
the reliability of the separate items decreases. The two- 
choice response is free from the difficulty of scoring the 
large variety of answers encountered in free responses. On 
the other hand, a single correct response, if free, has greater 
reliability as a measure of information, mainly because the 
two-choice form allows of guessing. Consequently, as more 
constraint is placed on responses, the number of items in 
the examination must be increased to gain reliability. The 
investigator should strive to obtain objectivity by placing 
constraint on the individuals responses and yet to retain 
reliability by allowing some freedom of response or by 
using a sufficiently large number of items. The happy 
medium is usually found in questions of types B2 or B3 (a) 
in the above classification, with not less than 50 items to an 
examination. 
Certain forms of test presentation have proved popular. 
The multiple choice test, with its many variations, is one of 
these. The usual number of alternative answers is four. 
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