Explanations for the presence of atypical patterns of response of a knowledge evaluation test in the FAREM-Carazo

Abstract

Test or test type tests provide good academic knowledge acquired by students. Although the tests are designed correctly, with contents representative of the knowledge that is to be evaluated, the results obtained by students who answer the questions atypically can be biased indicators of their levels of knowledge. This possible invalidity of some individual scores can be studied by identifying Atypical Response Patterns (ARP). However, the identification of ARP does not provide information about the causes of it. The objective of this work is to identify some of these possible causes. For this, the answers of a same test of 136 students of three careers taught in the Regional Multidisciplinary Faculty of Carazo, of UNAN-Managua (FAREM-Carazo) have been analyzed. Twenty-six of the students answered atypically, thanks to voluntary interviews with 16 of them; it could be identified as possible explanations for the presence of ARP in the absence of study and the consequent random answers to questions considered difficult or even, in the presence of a response copy. All these reasons justify the doubt about the validity of the scores obtained by those students who gave answers to the test based on aspects different from those of their knowledge in the subject evaluated.