Abstract: Objective Evaluating the effect of situational questions for qualifying the students’ abilities in physiology examination. Methods Comparing the difficulty coefficients and discrimination indexes between situational and traditional choice questions. Results Compared with the traditional choice questions, the difficulty coefficient of situational questions increased, while the discrimination indexes were more reasonable. The discrimination indexes of situational understanding questions were higher than those of the traditional memory and understanding questions. There were no difference between discrimination indexes of the situational application questions and those of traditional application questions. Conclusion Situational questions not only improved the quality of examinations, but also did better in evaluating students' learning ability.

Key words: Key words: physiology,, Test paper analysis, discrimination, difficulty coefficient,, situational choice questions