Multiple Choice Question Structures

In this exam tip we use the Certified Information and Privacy Professional (CIPP/E) by IAPP as an example. The CIPP/E exam contains 90 questions, all of which with multiple (four) answer possibilities. Some think that having a multiple choice exam is easy, but the IAPP has made it very difficult by having answers looking so much alike, that it is hard to find the distinctive factor of the right one. When you have found your sample questions by googling for them, be aware that these are, at least in most cases, made very easy. After reading the question you can immediately write off two of the answers that don’t make sense and then choose the most logical from the remaining two. The questions on the certification exam will be much more difficult and it is hard to prepare for that. To illustrate the difference think of the question: What colour is the sky? The answers you could choose from when you found your free sample questions online would be:
a.           Newspaper
b.           Blue
c.           Wednesday
d.           Green

In this example you could immediately write off answers A and C, because they aren't colours. Then you would choose answer B as the right answer, because the sky has never been green. The possible answers to this questions in your exam would be:

a.           Greyish blue
b.           Blueish grey
c.           Red, but only at night
d.           The sky has no colour and the blue you normally see is an illusion

Immediately, you can see it’s a lot harder to choose the right answer here, because they are all alike. This means, for your exam, you’d really need to study hard to find the right answers. It’s either right or wrong and unlike with open questions there’s no half right answers and you won’t get any points for your efforts.

There are about eight different structures for multiple choice questions, seven of which are used in the certification exam. The simple ‘right or wrong’ or ‘true or false’ question is not used for the obvious reason that it only contains two answers and the exam has four possible answers for every question. I will show you some examples of these ways of asking and answering here. It should help prepare you for the types of questions you will get during the exam.

1.           The statement can have more than two options (as opposed to ‘true/false’), like a colour, a time period, a number, etc.

a.           Blue
b.           Green
c.           Yellow
d.           Red

2.           There can be two statements, each of which can be true or false and you will have to find the right combination. Keep in mind that this question format can be lengthy; the statements can be very long sometimes.

a.           Statement I is true, Statement II is true
b.           Statement I is true, Statement II is false
c.           Statement I is false, Statement II is true
d.           Statement I is false, Statement II is false

3.           A factual question, like the definition of a certain term. In this case the question is often a short one, but the four answers can be lengthy statements or definitions that look very much alike.

4.           This is a tricky one and you will see it on different occasions in the exam; the question will be something like: ‘Which of the following statements best describes the procedure of X?’ or ‘Which of the following statements is most right?’ In this format you can imagine that all answers are right, but you will have to find the one that is ‘most’ right, and it can be hard to distinguish between the nuances.

5.           Finishing or completing a sentence. They make this format very difficult by often using more than one blank spot in the provided sentence, which will give you answers that are very much alike: ‘… is likely if …’.

6.           In the sixth format a situation or procedure is described in the answers and you will have to figure out which of those is right (or wrong). This means that the answers can be long and complex texts and you should read them carefully.

7.           In this last format I came across in the exam, typically three events are described and you will have to put them in the right, often chronological, order. The answers will look something like this:

a.           Event A, event B, event C
b.           Event B, event A, event C
c.           Event C, event A, event B
d.           Event C, event B, event A

When I was studying for the certification exam I kept these formats in mind when reading the articles. Preparation for the exam will go a lot faster if you can already think of the questions they might ask. In our test exam with ninety sample questions we have used all of these formats as well. Once you have studied and feel confident that you can answer all the possible questions about the material, you can test your knowledge in our trial exam on www.privacy-exam.com, before going up for the real thing. If you do that a week in advance and you should fail the trial exam, you will allow yourself ample time to study a little more.

Good luck with the preparation!