Writing assessment questions for online delivery: Principles and guidelines

Extended matching questions are a form of questions popular for testing in medicine and related subjects, although Wood (2003) claims that they can be applied to other subjects such as Biology. They follow a very specific format, which makes them easier to write and tends to result in more consistent questions.

The use of vignettes, or scenarios to which the student has to match a clinical diagnosis or management introduces an element of problem-solving into the question and tests the application of the student's knowledge at a deeper level than simple recollection of facts.