Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Business Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Accounting

Boise State University

Series

2016

Excess information

Articles 1 - 1 of 1

Full-Text Articles in Business

Why Use Multiple Choice Questions With Excess Information?, Jason Bergner, Joshua J. Filzen, Mark G. Simkin Mar 2016

Why Use Multiple Choice Questions With Excess Information?, Jason Bergner, Joshua J. Filzen, Mark G. Simkin

Accountancy Faculty Publications and Presentations

The examinations administered by accounting instructors, professional certification examiners, textbook writers, and preparatory accounting software all routinely include multiple-choice (MC) questions with excess (yet related) information. Despite their widespread use, little is known about how MC questions with excess information (hereafter MCE questions) affect student test performance. Based on an empirical analysis of the tests of 374 students in two introductory accounting classes at a single university, we found that average performance was lower on MCE questions than non-MCE questions, but was sensitive to the overall difficulty of the tested concept. We also found no significant difference in the power …