چکیده:
This study aimed at investigating the reliability, predictive validity, and self-esteem and gender bias of confidence-based scoring. This is a method of scoring in which the test takers receive a positive or negative point based on their rating of their confidence in an answer. The participants, who were 49 English-major students taking their grammar course, were given 8 multiple-choice tests during the semester. These tests were scored both conventionally and in a confidence-based manner, and the reliabilities of these two score sets were compared. Each score set was correlated with the final exam scores to compare their predictive validity. Gender and self-esteem bias of the confidence-based scores of the eight tests were also calculated. The results showed that there was no difference between the reliabilities of the two sets of scores. Confidence-based scores had better predictive validity than conventional scores, but this difference was not significant. Confidence-based scores were not biased against a specific gender and specific levels of self-esteem. The conclusion is that confidence-based scoring is as good as conventional scoring and the choice between these two scoring methods depends on the teacher’s discretion and the teaching context.
خلاصه ماشینی:
Comparing Confidence-based and Conventional Scoring Methods: The Case of an English Grammar Class Masoomeh Salehi Ph. D student in TEFL Islamic Azad University of Shiraz email: innocentsalehi@yahoo.
com Abstract This study aimed at investigating the reliability, predictive validity, and self-esteem and gender bias of confidence-based scoring.
Confidence-based assessment, in which a student is asked not only about the correct answer of a question but also about how confident he or she feels about his or her answer, is one of the methods which improve scoring of different types of objective tests (Gardner-Medwin, 2006).
We also examined the bias of confidence-based scoring against the gender and self-esteem level of the test takers.
Since this study is about reliability, predictive validity, and gender and self-esteem bias of confidence-based scores, the literature in this regard is reviewed in the following sections after elaborating on different methods of scoring confidence-based tests.
Hopkins, Hakstian, and Hopkins (1973) gave a 65-item multiple-choice test to 63 graduate students taking elementary statistics course in education and having previous experience with confidence weighting.
More recently, Gardner-Medwin and Gahan (2003) tested the difference between reliability of confidence-based scores and conventional scores of 6 medical exams, each with over 300 students, and 25-300 questions.
The authors of this study investigated the answers of male and female participants in two conventionally-scored multiple-choice tests which tested a wide range of different subject areas.
6. Discussion The results of this study showed that confidence-based scoring system is not at an advantage over conventional scoring considering reliability and predictive validity.