The relationship between true ability (operationally defined as the number of items for which the examinee actually knew the correct answer) and the effects of guessing upon observed test variance was investigated. Three basic hypotheses were treated mathematically: there is no functional relationship between true ability and guessing success;…

The present study was an attempt to alleviate some of the difficulties inherent in multiple-choice items by having examinees respond to multiple-choice items in a probabilistic manner. Using this format, examinees are able to respond to each alternative and to provide indications of any partial knowledge they may possess concerning the item. The…

One formulation of confidence scoring requires the examinee to indicate as a number his personal probability of the correctness of each alternative in a multiple-choice test. For this formulation, a linear transformation of the logarithm of the correct response is maximized if the examinee reports accurately his personal probability. To equate…