Dissecting knowledge, guessing, and blunder in multiple choice assessments.

ABSTRACT: Multiple choice results are inherently probabilistic outcomes, as correct responses reflect a combination of knowledge and guessing, while incorrect responses additionally reflect blunder, a confidently committed mistake. To objectively resolve knowledge from responses in an MC test structure, we evaluated probabilistic models that explicitly account for guessing, knowledge and blunder using eight assessments (>9,000 responses) from an undergraduate biotechnology curriculum. A Bayesian implementation of the models, aimed at assessing their robustness to prior beliefs in examinee knowledge, showed that explicit estimators of knowledge are markedly sensitive to prior beliefs with scores as sole input. To overcome this limitation, we examined self-ranked confidence as a proxy knowledge indica

SUBMITTER: Abu-Ghazalah RM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10201919 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature