Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Bradshaw, Gary

Committee Member

Jarosz, Andrew

Committee Member

Moss, Jarrod

Date of Degree

8-7-2020

Document Type

Graduate Thesis - Open Access

Major

Psychology

Degree Name

Master of Science

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Department of Psychology

Abstract

When given a multiple-choice test over unfamiliar material, students may score significantly above chance levels. This performance may be explained by prior knowledge of the material or by “test-wiseness,” determining the correct answer by using cues present in the test. Participants answered questions from an introductory psychology test-bank in two formats: a question stem with a single alternative and a traditional four alternative multiple-choice, reporting what sources of information they used to answer each question. For the single-alternative condition, participants had an accuracy of 42.2%, 17.2% higher than the base chance of 25%, with an average accuracy of 40.75% for the multiple-choice condition. Participants who stated they had previously learnt the material showed no significant difference in accuracy than those who stated they had guessed. These findings suggest that tests may have inflated scores which reflect test-wiseness and prior knowledge more than formal learning of the test materials.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/18457

Comments

test-wiseness||testing||background knowledge||test wiseness||multiple-choice||guessing

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