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Do True-False Question Variants Create Bias?

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Conference

2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Publication Date

June 22, 2025

Start Date

June 22, 2025

End Date

August 15, 2025

Conference Session

Assessments, Feedback, & Grading

Tagged Division

Civil Engineering Division (CIVIL)

Page Count

10

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/56304

Download Count

1

Paper Authors

author page

Jacqueline Jenkins Cleveland State University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-2292-7176

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Abstract

In an introductory transportation engineering course, four versions of four tests were developed as a measure to deter cheating. These tests included a total of 45 true-false questions. Of those, five questions were written as true statements (true only), and seven questions were written as false statements (false only). The remaining 33 questions were written as a true statement (true variant) and a corresponding false statement (false variant) and assigned to the different test versions. This approach raised three concerns: 1) that the student performance on the different versions of a test would differ; 2) that true-false statements that were written as a true statement and corresponding false statement would provide some hint to students; and 3) that student performance on the true variant and false variant questions would differ. The test responses from 53 students were analyzed. For each of the four tests, the performance on the true-false questions on the four versions was found to be comparable. In addition, the performance on the true variant questions and true only questions was found comparable as was the performance on the false variant and false only questions. Lastly, the performance on the true variant questions was found to be equal to or greater than the performance on false variant questions. The conclusion is that assigning true and false variants across versions of a test does not introduce a bias when the proportion of true to false questions is consistent.

Jenkins, J. (2025, June), Do True-False Question Variants Create Bias? Paper presented at 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada . https://peer.asee.org/56304

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