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True-False Tests Give You A Good Idea Of What Facts Trainees Received. When designing true-false tests, keep these factors in mind:
- Write statements that are clearly true or clearly false.
- Take statements used in training and rephrase them slightly.
- Avoid words that tip trainees to the answer, such as "may" or "generally" for true statements, or "always" or "never" for false statements.
- Avoid double negatives, which make statements unnecessarily confusing.
- Remember that you're not trying to stump trainees—you're trying to make sure they learned the material.
Multiple Choice May Be The Most Popular With Trainees, but they can be the hardest to write for trainers. Follow these suggestions when designing multiple choice tests: - Cover one topic per question.
- Include only one right answer. Of course, you want all the choices to seem right, but make sure you don't get so close to right that someone might have a valid argument as to his or her choice being correct.
- If space allows, use more than three choices. Remember, the more choices you have, the less guessing is involved (e.g., four choices means a guess rate of 25 percent, five choices means 20 percent).
- Avoid always making the right answer the longest choice.
- Avoid making the right answer choice "C" very often. This practice thwarts seasoned multiple-choice test takers, who know to guess "C" when in doubt. One way to achieve randomness is to list answers in alphabetical order.
- Avoid giving a grammatical clue in your question, such as using "a" with only one answer beginning with a consonant or "an" with only one answer beginning with a vowel.
- Limit your use of "all of the above" and "none of the above." But if you use it for one question, you must use it for at least one more, or trainees will take a clue that it's probably the right choice for the only question where you included it.
Matching Tests Are Used Less Often But Can Be Fun For the Trainee and much easier to design for trainers. Here's how to write a matching quiz: - Cover one topic per matching exercise. For example, one test could match a list of chemicals with a list of personal protective equipment the chemical requires. A separate test could match a list of chemical regulations with a list of quotations from those regs. Or one test could match a list of employment laws with a list of the rights they protect and another test could list employment law acronyms with a list of their full names.
- Limit the number of items to around 10. Fewer than 8 can be too easy and more than 12 can get too confusing.
- Lay out the test on one page so trainees don't have to flip back and forth.
- Make the items in each list brief. Use names, objects, tools, agencies, etc. Avoid making an item longer than one sentence.
Fill-In-the-Blank Tests Can Be Tricky to Write, But They Prove That Trainees Learned the Information because they have to produce the right answer without seeing it on the page as in any of the previous tests mentioned. Follow these tips for composing fill-in-the-blank questions: - Use only one blank per question. Too many blanks don't give trainees enough information to even grasp the topic.
- Keep the blanks to specific information, such as regulation titles or government agencies. Make the nouns or verbs in a sentence the blank lines, not the adjectives or adverbs.
- Phrase statements so that there can be only one answer that correctly fills in the blank.
- Place blanks later in the sentence, which helps to give trainees the context of the topic.
- Avoid grammatical clues immediately preceding the blank, such as "a" or "an."
Some Training Is Best Measured By Hands-On Performance. Learning how to use a new piece of equipment is an obvious example. In any case, testing your employees after training is an invaluable tool to help you see how effective your training is—and to improve if you need to.
Why It Matters
- Regulation compliance prevents costly fines.
- Proper procedures prevent accidents, lost workdays, and workers' compensation costs.
- Emergency preparation aids quick evacuation.
- First-aid training saves lives.
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