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The equivalence of online and traditional testing for different subpopulations and item types
Author(s) -
MacCann Robert
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
british journal of educational technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.79
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1467-8535
pISSN - 0007-1013
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8535.2005.00524.x
Subject(s) - socioeconomic status , equivalence (formal languages) , psychology , matching (statistics) , test (biology) , population , demography , social psychology , statistics , mathematics , sociology , paleontology , biology , discrete mathematics
A trial of pen‐and‐paper and online modes of a computing skills test was conducted for volunteer students of ages 15–16 in New South Wales, Australia. The tests comprised Matching, True/False and 4‐option Multiple‐Choice items. The aims were to determine whether gender, socioeconomic status (SES), or the type of item interacted with testing mode. No interactions were found for gender and item type, but the SES interaction was statistically significant. For low SES students, the online mode mean was 1 percent lower than the pen‐and‐paper mean, whereas high SES students had near equivalent means. These findings should be treated with caution as the groups in the study were self‐selected, rather than random samples from the student population.