As a follow up to my last post, I did ask students in my class to randomly
guess at 5 items with 5 possible answers to each. Here are the results:
5 right - 0
4 right - 0
3 right - 0
2 right - 4
1 right - 14
0 right - 9
So, those that guessed correctly on 2 items would have received +.5 (2
right - 1.5 for wrong answers). Those who got 1 item correct would have
broken even (0 points). Those that missed all 5 would have lost 1.25
points. So, as I believed, it is possible that some people would have been
hurt by guessing.
Admittedly a small sample, but if anything it points out that random
guessing doesn't ALWAYS help and can in fact hurt a person's score.
- Marc
PS- TEACHING RELEVANCE! I was able to tie the above data collection in with
a discussion of different ways of knowing and how we can turn to empirical
methods to examine questions. I didn't do this until after I collected the
data though...
G. Marc Turner, MEd
Lecturer & Head of Computer Operations
Department of Psychology
Southwest Texas State University
San Marcos, TX 78666
phone: (512)245-2526
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
