• Use at least six pairings and no more than twelve. If there are fewer than six, a multiple-choice question might be preferable. If more than twelve pairings are required, it may be difficult to keep track of questions that deal with the sequencing of events.
• Provide additional pairings or distracters in order to reduce the element of chance. Unless instructors allow students to select a response more than once, or unless one list of items is longer than the other, students may achieve success simply by eliminating items rather than by knowing the correct answer. Normally, the longest list appears on the left-hand side.
• All the items in a list should be similar in form. For example, if you are matching a country to its currency, then the list of currencies should all be in the same form – symbols or words.
• Arrange the lists in some logical order. The list could contain items arranged according to size, date, or the alphabet.
• Place all lists to a single question on the same page. It can be confusing and distracting if students must flip the page back and forth to find possible
matches.