THE EFFECT OF SCRAMBLING TEST QUESTIONS ON STUDENT PERFORMANCE IN A SMALL CLASS SETTING

Della L. Sue

Journal for Economic Educators, 2009, vol. 9, issue 1, 32-41

Abstract: A technique used by instructors is to prepare several versions of the same exam in which the multiple-choice questions appear in a different order in each version. This makes it difficult for a student to obtain answers from another student while keeping the level of difficulty of the exam constant across students since every version contains the same questions. If the order in which questions are arranged in an exam has an effect on a student’s performance on the exam, then changing the sequence order may bias student performance. Previous statistical analyses of data collected from economics courses provide mixed results on whether scrambling the content order biases a student’s test score. In this paper, I investigate the effect of scrambling test questions on student performance in principles of macroeconomics courses and principles of microeconomics courses that are characterized by small class size.

Keywords: pedagogy; testing; and student performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mts:jrnlee:v:9:y:2009:i:1:p:32-41

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