Table 2. The differential distribution of different violations and their percentage out of the 1,763 MCQs, (1,763/2,300 = 77%) which contain item flaws (537 good items, i.e., without flaws).

Violation criteria		Violations per 1,763 MCQs	% (NB)
V No.	Structural violations (flaws)
V1	The item is not conclusive	123	7
V2	The item is not typical SBA type	280	16
V3	The item is not focused	310	18
V4	The item is not clearly expressed	251	14
V5	All the options are not uniform	260	15
V6	All the options are not homogenous	230	13
V7	All the options are not plausible	108	6
	Test-wiseness violations
V8	There is clang	30	2
V9	There is clueing	72	4
V10	There is convergence	14	1
V11	There is absolute or vague terms	85	5
V12	There is crowded key option	122	10
	Irrelevant difficulty violations
V13	The item is overloaded with information	169	10
V14	The item is not stated positively	250	14
V15	The options are not arranged in order	1,067	61
V16	The options have numerical Inconsistency	9	1
V17	The options have overlap	75	4
V18	The options have ambiguity	134	8
V19	There is “all of the above” or “none of the above”	228	13
V20	The options have “complex choices”	71	4

Abbreviations: MCQ, multiple-choice question; NB, the major violations in the current study were compared with the different resources and was presented in Supplementary Material S3 (available in the online version); SBA, single-best answer; V, violation.

Note: Violation no. in the checklist (the detailed checklist was mentioned in the Supplementary Material S2 [available in the online version]).