"Parse Tree" <parsetree at hotmail.com> wrote:
>A properly constructed test wouldn't have been multiple choice. The test is
>essentially meaningless.
>>I like how you admit that they're multiple choice now.
Actually the test is well-constructed, since the various multiple choice
answers each corresponds to a particular conception or likely misconception
of the problem. When one is constructing a normed test, guessing is not a
problem. One can adjust scores for guessing by including a guessing penalty
(this happens on the SATs for example) or one can simply compare percentages
choosing each answer with those of other populations (which is what TIMSS
does). TIMSS is not designed so that ANY kid could get a perfect score or
anywhere near a perfect score, and I've never read a report that suggests
that any kid did so. There are easy problems and there are hard problems,
and the problems are weighted by the difficulty that they were found to
present to the entire test population.
TIMSS also included many problems that were NOT multiple choice, BTW, and you
could not get full credit unless your work was shown and contained the key
steps expected in the solution.
lojbab
