Test-Wiseness: A Cognitive Function?

Test-taking strategies are cognitive abilities to deal with any testing situation well independently of the knowledge of the test content. Examples are managing time effectively, surveying all questions before responding, dealing with difficult questions, dealing with multiple-choice questions, and underlying keywords questions. This paper has two goals. First, reviewing and discussing the direct and indirect importance of teaching test-taking strategies on students' performance: Directly, these strategies help students increase their scores on tests through the effective use of their time, effort, and test conditions. Indirectly, using appropriate test-taking strategies affects other factors such as reducing test anxiety and improving attitudes toward tests; second, suggesting teaching techniques to help teachers, educators, and test developers systematically teach test-taking strategies: More than 50 techniques for teaching the main test-taking strategies have been introduced in question formatting. These techniques could be taught with any content or materials and at any school level.

Multiple Choice Items in Testing: Practice and Theory has been designed to address multiple choice item tests (MCITs) from two perspectives: Practice and Theory. Since the book approaches MCITs from a practical point of view it should serve as a guide to be used by practitioners who wish to develop their own MCITs. Furthermore, it explores MCITs from various theoretical angles and should, therefore, be of interest to students, teachers and researchers in almost all fields of knowledge in general and language testing, applied linguistics, education, and psychology in particular. The philosophy underscoring the design of Multiple Choice Items in Testing: Practice and Theory was the conviction that MCITs should be addressed and investigated from a theoretically sound basis. These tests have been doomed to a solitary position enclosed by the fences of negligence and subjectivity. However, in spite of being excommunicated, MCITs have retained their furtive impact on almost all educational spheres and decisions. The text is the result of an endeavour to shed some lights, however dim and insufficient, on the strong points of MCITs. These lights justify the perseverance and widespread use of MCITs and thus let them bathe in the shower of knowledge and new horizons. The topics comprising Multiple Choice Items in Testing: Practice and Theory have been brought up in such a manner that nothing of expertise in testing is required. The book can, therefore, be used by both undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate students in various fields. The first chapter deals with the format of multiple choice item tests. The second and third chapters discuss their components and pave the way for the discussion of cognitive processes and the influence of pedagogical theories on MCITs in chapter four. Chapter Five explores the sources suggested for developing multiple choice items. The advantage and disadvantages of MCITs are elaborated in Chapter Six. And finally Chapter Seven touches upon indices used for item analysis on the one hand and test analysis on the other.

Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 2005

Why will multiple-choice tests continue to serve the needs of education, business, and government? How d o differences in cognitive style affect performance on multiple-choice tests of different types? How does clarity and care in writing multiple-choice items affect performance?

Educational and Psychological Measurement, 1995

In self-adapted testing (SAT), examinees select difficulty levels of items administered. This study investigated three variations of prior information provided when taking a SAT: (a) No Information: Examinees selected item difficulty levels without prior information; (b) View: Examinees inspected a typical item from each difficulty level prior to the SAT; (c) Route: Examinees answered a typical item from each difficulty level and were informed prior to the SAT of the level that best matched their performance. No significant difference in test performance or level of anxiety was found as a function of providing examinees more information.

This exploratory study looked at examinee item choice behavior in a variant of computerized adaptive testing, called self-adapted testing, which allows each examinee to choose the difficulty levels of the test items that he/she is administered. Examinees who chose more difficult first items (a) initially expressed greater capability and higher confidence, and (b) reported less anxiety just prior to testing and to math in general. Correlations of capability and confidence with item choice decreased with subsequent items on the test. The strategies that examinees employed in choosing items was also investigated with the finding that examinees tended to move to a more difficult level after one or more successes at a particular difficulty level and to a less difficult level after one or more failures at a given level. High correlations were found between the difficulty levels chosen and examinee ability level indicating that examinees showed a strong tendency to choose items that were of moderate difficulty for them.

The study aims at identifying and describing the test -taking strategies of first year students in college enrolled in Filipino 2 (Pagbasa at Pagsulat Tungo sa Pananaliksik) at Holy Angel University. Using descriptive method of research, the researchers adopted the Survey Questionnaire of Hadloz, et al which they used in their research in 2012. The respondents of the study were the 2267 first year college students taking up Filipino 2 during the 2 nd semester of the school year 2012-2013. The result showed that students very much prefer to answer examination questions with provision of choices with the correct answer such as multiple choice and true or false. Moreover, the result also showed that students do not prefer examinations requiring them to recall information such as identification type of examination. The results match the kind of examination students prefer to answer. Students very much want to answer test items in multiple choice form and matching type.

International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 2012

Multiple-choice (MC) tests are arguably the most widely used testing format in applied settings. In the psychometric and education literatures, research on the optimal number of options for knowledge and ability MC tests has revealed that three-option tests are psychometrically equivalent and, in some cases, superior to five-option tests. In addition, there are a number of practical, economic, and administrative advantages associated with the use of three-option MC tests.Yet, despite its advantages, the three-option format is underutilized in personnel selection. Across two studies, we compared test-taker perceptions, criterionrelated validity, and sex-based subgroup differences, and in Study 1, we compared race-based subgroup differences on three-and five-option tests. Participants in the two studies completed a three-or five-option version of ACT.Test perceptions, criterion-related validity, and race-and sex-based subgroup differences were similar across test formats.The implications for the expanded use of three-option tests in applied settings and future directions for research are discussed.

International Journal of Research Studies in Education, 2015

The present study was conducted to investigate the test-taking strategies that respondents used when completing two different item specifications (Factual Information and Inference questions) of a high-stake reading comprehension test. 130 randomly chosen undergraduate EFL learners preparing themselves for graduate studies were divided into three groups based on the results of a proficiency test. Based on their scores from the proficiency test, each ability group had 40 participants. All groups completed two reading passages of Iranian National University Entrance Exam for MA (INUEMA) and two Test-taking Strategy questionnaires which contained four types of strategies. A series of Kruskal-Wallis tests was conducted to investigate whether the three ability group's measures of performance on four types of test-taking strategies revealed significant difference after completing Inference and Factual Information questions. In cases the difference among ability groups was significant; Mann-Whitney U test was conducted as a follow-up significance test in order to indicate where the significant difference occurred. The results revealed that the high-ability and the intermediate groups, compared with the low-ability group, employed more evaluation strategies when completing Inference items of INUEMA. Moreover, low-ability test takers used test-wiseness strategies for Inference items more than the high-ability and the intermediate groups. With respect to the Factual Information items, the intermediate group used more monitoring strategies than the high-ability test takers. Focusing on the validity of the above high-stake test, the findings of the present study are likely to be of great interest to EFL material designers, instructors and high-stake test developers.

English Language Teaching, 2008

This study investigated the relative frequency of seven TW strategies among Iranian EFL students to find out probable relationship(s) between test-wiseness, proficiency and gender. To do so, out of 138 participants, a total number of 80 undergraduate EFL students from Shahid Chamran University were chosen and divided on the basis of their proficiency scores into four cells of 20 individuals (High/Low Proficient Male/Female). All of them were required to sit for the second exam after two weeks periods from the first experiment. They took a test of TW comprised of 50 items in which seven selected TW strategies were incorporated. Data analysis showed significant differences between the two groups, that is, high proficient groups outperformed their low proficient counterparts. In other words, more proficient students were more test-wise. Therefore, as proved by the results of the study, TW and proficiency of students are positively correlated. Another finding suggested that there is no significant difference between the two genders concerning TW strategies.