Answer Changing: A Conditional Argument

This study investigated the answer changing patterns in two graduate-level courses. Eight years of data involving 1819 subjects and 123,548 items indicate the overwhelming propensity to change at least one answer. Nearly two-thirds of these changes were positive. No difference was found in the pattern of answer changing for male and female subjects. The most important finding indicated that answer-changing frequency increased as ability decreased. Concurrently, the percent of positive changes also significantly decreased as ability dropped. Phase II implemented a survey to determine why students changed answers. Responses were coded into six categories: changes based on a cue, misinterpretation, clerical errors, reconsideration, guessing, and all other responses. The proportion of positive changes was significantly higher for clerical errors and cued changes than for changes made when the reason supplied was either a reconsideration of the question or guessing. This phenomenon, although logical, indicates that the rationale that inspires a student to change an answer is linked to the ability level of the subject and that these alternative explanations possess drastically different conditional probabilities of making a positive change. Soon after tests of achievement and aptitude became an element of our educational culture, test-taking strategies followed. The most well known test-taking strategy advises students to never change an answer to a multiple-choice item. The justification of this theory is that the initial impression is usually correct. In fact, many faculty members advise their students not to change answers (Kussler, 1988). The literature states that, although most students believe in this theory, it is more common to see students change answers (Haase, Riley, Dunn, & Gaskins, 1992). In fact, not only do most students change at least one answer to a multiple-choice question, the overwhelming majority of these changes are from incorrect to correct answers (Benjamin, Cavell, & Shallenberger, 1984). Many studies have attempted to link answer-changing patterns to gender, item difficulty, and student ability. In most cases it has been found that answer changing patterns do not differ significantly between levels of these various characteristics (Waddell & Blankenship, 1994). Two articles have attempted to further the research on answer changing by using qualitative techniques to offer insight as to why students change answers. Schwarz, McMorris, and DeMers (1991) suggest that all answer changes cannot be treated as equal events. They contend that very few changes are clerical in nature and that the role of memory and its processes need to be incorporated into the study of this phenomenon. Shatz and Best (1987) provided insight into this topic by proposing that the rationale behind an individual answer change fits into one of four mutually exclusive categories; accidental incorrect marking of the answer sheet, misinterpretation of the question, cue from another question, or lack of certainty concerning the correctness of an original answer (guessing). Waddell and Blankenship's meta-analysis (1994) provided a synthesis of much of the quantitative research that has been done over the past 60 years. From a sample of 61 studies they found that 82% of the subjects changed at least one answer. The average number of answers changed only made up 5.1% of the total items on an exam. Of the changes that were made, 57% were from incorrect to correct answers, these changes outnumbering changes from correct to incorrect answers at a ratio of 2.88 to 1. More importantly, 68.2% of those subjects that changed an answer improved their total test score. Only 15.2% of the subjects who made changes lowered their overall test scores. This impact demonstrates the importance of understanding why students change answers and how educators should advise students regarding making changes. The sample size of these studies ranged from 24 to 1903, with a median sample size of 134 subjects. …

Field of study: Education