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50 Years of ERIC
50 Years of ERIC
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ERIC Number: ED403273
Record Type: RIE
Publication Date: 1994-Jun
Pages: 10
Abstractor: N/A
Reference Count: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
To Change or Not To Change: The Multiple Choice Dilemma.
Friedman-Erickson, Sharon
Study skills books sometimes give conflicting advice concerning whether or not students should change their initial responses to multiple-choice questions about which they are unsure. In contrast, answer-changing research consistently shows that the majority of answer changes are from wrong to right. Responses of 244 community college students to 38,800 multiple-choice items were examined to determine the percentage of responses changed from wrong to right, right to wrong, and wrong to wrong. Results show that more responses were changed from wrong to right than from right to wrong or from wrong to wrong. For the 3 courses studied, 56% of changes were from wrong to right, with 24% from right to wrong, and 20% from wrong to another wrong answer. Change percentages were rather consistent among the three courses. (Contains one table and seven references.) (SLD)
Publication Type: Reports - Evaluative; Speeches/Meeting Papers
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers: Answer Changing (Tests); Choice Behavior
Note: Paper presented at the Annual Institute of the American Psychological Society on the Teaching of Psychology (Washington, DC, June 1994).