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Probing Question Order Effect In Chemistry Concept Inventories, Molly Undersander, Travis J. Lund, Laurie S. Langdon, Marilyne Stains

UCARE Research Products

The design of assessment tools is critical to evaluate accurately students’ understanding of chemistry. Although extensive research has been conducted on various aspects of assessment tool design, few studies in chemistry have focused on the impact of the order in which questions are presented to students on the measurement of students’ understanding and students’ performance. This potential impact has been labeled the question order effect in other literature. The set of studies described in this article tested whether question order effects were present within a concept inventory on acid-based chemistry. In particular, we tested whether the order of two conceptually …