One objection likely to be raised to the use of the alternate-choice items is that
they deal with isolated factual detail s. Their brevity and specificity may be taken
as indications of triviality (Highet, 1950, p. 120). But if the conception of
knowledge presented in this chapter is correct, if verbal knowledge can be
expressed completely as a structure of relations, if each of these relations (the
elements of the structure) can be expressed as a proposition , and if each proposition
is used as the basis for an alternate-choice item, then one can assess the
extent and firmness of the whole structure by examining the parts that compose it
(Thorndike, 1935; Wood & Beers, 1936, p. 162). The choice of a response to an
alternate-choice item is simple to indicate, but the process of making it rationally
may be quite complex. If a problem like the following has not been encountered
before, it is likely to test understanding and application as well as recall.