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University examinations: Free response - or multiple-choice preferable?

Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling 2024-1

"Examinations commonly use either free-response (FR) or multiple-choice (MC) response formats, each with its advantages and disantvantages. Despite frequent reports of high construct equivalence between them, certain group differences based on differing person characteristics still need to be explained." Prof. Dr. Tuulia M. Ortner et al. "aimed to investigate how test takers´ characteristics and behavior - particularly test anxiety, risk propensity, conscientiousness, lecture attendance, and study time - impact test scores in exams with FR and MC format." The authors report in ´Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling´ (1/24):

"Data was collected from 376 students enrolled in one of two Psychology lectures at a large Austrian University at the beginning of the semester and post-exam in a real-life setting. Multilevel analyses revealed that, overall students achieved higher scores on FR items compared to MC items. Less test anxiety, higher conscientiousness, and more study time significantly increased student examination performance. Lecture attendance impacted performance differently according to the exam items´ response format: Students who attended more lectures scored higher on the MC items compared to the FR items. Risk propensity exhibited no significant effect on exam scores. The results offer deeper insights into the nuanced interplay between academic performance, and other influencing factors with the aim of establishing more reliable and valid performance tests in the future...

It was quite surprising to discover that students performed better on the FR sections of the final exams in contrast to the MC sections. This finding defied the common trend observed in existing literature, which typically indicates that MC items tend to yield higher scores than FR items ..."

Tuulia Ortner, Verena Keneder, Sonja Breuer, Freya M. Gruber, Thomas Scherndl
Unraveling Performance on Multiple-Choice and Free-Response University Exams: A Multilevel Analysis of Study Time, Lecture Attendance and Personality Traits.
in: Psychology Test and Assessment Modeling, 2024.
https://doi.org/10.2440/001-0013




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