ABSTRACT While previous research has identified numerous factors that contribute to item difficulty, studies involving large-scale reading tests have provided mixed results. This study examined five selected-response item types used to measure reading comprehension in the Pearson Test of English Academic: a) multiple-choice (choose one answer), b) multiple-choice (choose multiple answers), c) re-order paragraphs, d) reading (fill-in-the-blanks), and e) reading and writing (fill-in-the-blanks). Utilizing a multiple regression approach, the criterion measure consisted of item difficulty scores for 172 items. 18 passage, passage-question, and response-format variables served as predictors. Overall, four significant predictors were identified for the entire group (i.e., sentence length, falsifiable distractors, number of correct options, and abstractness of information requested) and five variables were found to be significant for high-performing readers (including the four listed above and passage coherence); only the number of falsifiable distractors was a significant predictor for low-performing readers. Implications for assessing reading comprehension are discussed.

中文翻译：

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调查不同的选择响应项目格式对阅读理解的影响

摘要虽然先前的研究已经发现许多因素导致项目困难，但涉及大规模阅读测试的研究却得出了不同的结果。这项研究检查了五种选择答题类型，这些类型用于衡量英语学术课程的皮尔逊测验中的阅读理解能力：a）多项选择（选择一个答案），b）多项选择（选择多个答案），c）重新排列段落，d）阅读（填空）和e）阅读和写作（填空）。使用多元回归方法，标准度量包括172个项目的项目难度评分。18个段落，段落问题和响应格式变量用作预测变量。总体而言，整个小组共确定了四个重要的预测指标（例如，句子长度，伪造的干扰因素，正确选项的数量，以及所要求的信息的抽象性）和五个变量被认为对高水平的读者很重要（包括上面列出的四个和段落的连贯性）；对于表现不佳的读者，只有伪造的干扰因素是重要的预测指标。讨论了评估阅读理解的含义。