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Identifying low test-taking effort during low-stakes tests with the new Test-taking Effort Short Scale (TESS) - development and psychometrics.

ABSTRACT: Low-stakes tests are becoming increasingly important in international assessments of educational progress, and the validity of these results is essential especially as these results are often used for benchmarking. Test scores in these tests not only mirror students' ability but also depend on their test-taking effort. One way to obtain more valid scores from participating samples is to identify test-takers with low test-taking effort and to exclude them from further analyses. Self-assessment is a convenient and quick way of measuring test-taking effort. We present the newly developed Test-taking Effort Short Scale (TESS), which comprises three items measuring attainment value/intrinsic value, utility value, and perceived benefits, respectively.In a multicenter validation study with N?=?1837 medical students sitting a low-stakes progress test we analyzed item and test statistics including construct and external validity.TESS showed very good psychometric properties. We propose an approach using stanine norms to determine a cutoff value for identifying participants with low test-taking effort.With just three items, TESS is shorter than most established self-assessment scales; it is thus suited for administration after low-stakes progress testing. However, further studies are necessary to establish its suitability for routine usage in assessment outside progress testing.

SUBMITTER: Schuttpelz-Brauns K

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5941641 | biostudies-literature | 2018 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Identifying low test-taking effort during low-stakes tests with the new Test-taking Effort Short Scale (TESS) - development and psychometrics.

Schüttpelz-Brauns Katrin K Kadmon Martina M Kiessling Claudia C Karay Yassin Y Gestmann Margarita M Kämmer Juliane E JE

BMC medical education 20180508 1

<h4>Background</h4>Low-stakes tests are becoming increasingly important in international assessments of educational progress, and the validity of these results is essential especially as these results are often used for benchmarking. Test scores in these tests not only mirror students' ability but also depend on their test-taking effort. One way to obtain more valid scores from participating samples is to identify test-takers with low test-taking effort and to exclude them from further analyses. ...[more]

PMID: 29739405

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Project description:Different types of tasks exist, including tasks for research purposes or exams assessing knowledge. According to expectation-value theory, tests are related to different levels of effort and importance within a test taker. Test-taking effort and importance in students decreased over the course of high-stakes tests or low-stakes-tests in research on test-taking motivation. However, whether test-order changes affect effort, importance, and response processes of education students have seldomly been experimentally examined. We aimed to examine changes in effort and importance resulting from variations in test battery order and their relations to response processes. We employed an experimental design assessing N = 320 education students' test-taking effort and importance three times as well as their performance on cognitive ability tasks and a mock exam. Further relevant covariates were assessed once such as expectancies, test anxiety, and concentration. We randomly varied the order of the cognitive ability test and mock exam. The assumption of intraindividual changes in education students' effort and importance over the course of test taking was tested by one latent growth curve that separated data for each condition. In contrast to previous studies, responses and test response times were included in diffusion models for examining education students' response processes within the test-taking context. The results indicated intraindividual changes in education students' effort or importance depending on test order but similar mock-exam response processes. In particular effort did not decrease, when the cognitive ability test came first and the mock exam subsequently but significantly decreased, when the mock exam came first and the cognitive ability test subsequently. Diffusion modeling suggested differences in response processes (separation boundaries and estimated latent trait) on cognitive ability tasks suggesting higher motivational levels when the cognitive ability test came first than vice versa. The response processes on the mock exam tasks did not relate to condition.

Dataset Information

Identifying low test-taking effort during low-stakes tests with the new Test-taking Effort Short Scale (TESS) - development and psychometrics.

Publications

Identifying low test-taking effort during low-stakes tests with the new Test-taking Effort Short Scale (TESS) - development and psychometrics.

Similar Datasets

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