STUDENT’S RISK PERCEPTIONS AND PERFORMANCE IN THE MULTIPLE CHOICE EXAMS

The development of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) has facilitated many of the roles of teachers making more efficient their daily tasks. Access to ICTs has not only improved the means of teaching in the classroom but also has promoted the existence of other communication and assessment channels. In that way, ICTs have allowed performing multiple choice exams with immediate feedback for the students. Since one of the most important processes of interaction between student and teacher is the assessment of knowledge, skills and attitudes acquired in classroom, analyze the results of multiple choice exams has been of great importance in the literature of education (Doerner and Calhoun, 2009; Sue, 2009). The debate that has emerged around this type of testing is that the level of difficulty and the result obtained by the student is highly determined not only by the level of difficulty of the questions, but also by the design of parameters (number of questions, ordination of questions, penalty for incorrect answers,...) affecting the student response process (Bresnock et al, 1989; Sue, 2006).

Some investigations have shown that the variation in students’ marks is strongly affected by the type of exam –in relation to the order of the questions- (Taub and Bell, 1975; Carlson and Ostrosky , 1992; Doerner and Calhoun, 2009) and the penalty of the incorrect answers –in reference to the level of risk borne by the students- (Carrasco et al., 2013 ). Taking into account these evidences, in this study we focus on analyzing these two parameters of multiple-choice exams, creating two scenarios that include exams sorted both by different order content and by different level of risk borne. In relation to risk, although both scenarios penalize incorrect answers in the same proportion, there are distinct student’s perceptions: in the first scenario the students know that their incorrect answers are penalized while, in the other one, students do not know that their wrong answers are penalized.

The study was conducted on a sample of 764 first grade exams Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management. Our general findings show that there are differences in the answer’s procedure, affecting the final marks when risk perceptions of the students are different. Students who thought they would not be penalized in the multiple choice exam were obtained better grades and a higher rate of right questions, as well as a lower rate of incorrect answers . Moreover, the order effect also influences the response procedure and its effects on the final marks of the students depending on the risk scenario they are facing.