We compared students’ responses on four multiple-choice FCI questions with similar responses on equivalent open-ended questions. In Phase-I of the study students in an introductory algebra-based course responded to two questionnaires each containing two open-ended and two multiple-choice questions. The open-ended responses were categorized and used as multiple-choices in Phase-II of the study.
Our results indicate a good agreement between the percentages of correct responses in each of the two formats, indicating that distracters on the FCI do not adversely affect performance as measured by the number of correct answers. However, a significant percentage of the open-ended responses fall into categories that are not included in the FCI multiple choices. When these alternative categories were presented to the students as distracters in a revised multiple-choice format, a significant percentage of the students chose these alternative responses.