Perhaps I am too trusting, but I've got to "guess" that the folks at ETS are
not amateurs at test construction. Favoring some distractors, either by
placement of the correct answer or content of the distractors, is something
that is avoided.
I cast my vote for Stephen's position.
"G. Marc Turner" wrote:
> Lucky for us, this is something we can test (no voting required)... Have
> your students take out a sheet of paper and randomly guess the answers to 5
> non-existent questions. Each question has a possible answer of a, b, c, d,
> or e. Since we want them to truly guess randomly, we will not actually give
> them questions... we just want them to randomly give us the responses.
>
> Here is the key to use to grade the responses: C E D E D
>
> Now, grade the quizes... if ANY student fails to get at least 1 correct,
> the claim that it will NEVER hurt a person's score is false. At this point
> we know that Steven's claim does not have support from the data. If you
> continue scoring for everyone, you can figure out if my claim of getting 1
> correct, ON AVERAGE has support or not.
>
> Until we have actual data collected on this, I don't see much point in
> guessing as to the benefits or costs of guessing...
--
********* http://www.coe.uca.edu/psych/scoles/index.html ********
* Mike Scoles * [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
* Department of Psychology * voice: (501) 450-5418 *
* University of Central Arkansas * fax: (501) 450-5424 *
* Conway, AR 72035-0001 * *
*****************************************************************
