The Relationship between Response-Time Effort and Accuracy in PISA Science Multiple Choice Items

The study examined the relationship between examinees’ test-taking effort and their accuracy rate on items from the PISA 2015 assessment. The 10% normative threshold method was applied on Science multiple-choice items in the Cyprus sample to detect rapid guessing behavior. Results showed that the extent of rapid guessing across simple and complex multiple-choice items was on average less than 6% per item. Rapid guessers were identified, and for most items their accuracy was lower than the accuracy for students engaging in solution-based behavior. Examinees with higher overall performance on the test items tended to engage in less rapid guessing than their lower performing peers. Overall, this empirical investigation presents original evidence on test-taking effort as measured by response time in PISA items and tests propositions of Wise’s (2017) Test-Taking Theory.