Can we identify the students who have success in macroeconomics depending on exam format by comparing multiple-choice test and constructed response test?

Abstract

The selection of assessment format in business schools and higher education has been a topic of consideration for many years. Currently, in Norway, there is a debate about replacing constructed response (CR) questions with multiple-choice (MC) questions. MC tests are popular and have been substituted for traditional exams in many fields. In the context of costs, there is obviously a gain to using MC tests. By exploring data from a macroeconomics course that applied both essay-based and multiple-choice-based tests simultaneously, it was possible to compare the two exam formats and to identify students who performed differently. By using a linear regression model, the findings revealed that there were substantial differences in the influence of the independent variables for the two methods. For CR, the result confirms prior research, while there was almost no significant connection between the chosen independent variables and the dependent variable MC. Therefore, students' background, skills and personal characteristics matter.