Elimination Scoring Versus Correction for Guessing: A Simulation Study

Administering multiple-choice questions with correction for guessing fails to take into account partial knowledge and may introduce a bias as examinees may differ in risk-taking to guess the correct answer when not having full knowledge. In the latter case, elimination scoring gives examinees the opportunity to express their partial knowledge as this alternative scoring procedure requires examinees to eliminate all the response alternatives they consider to be incorrect. The current simulation study investigates how these two scoring procedures affect response behaviors of examinees who differ not only in ability but also in their attitude toward risk. Combining a psychometric model accounting for ability and item difficulty with the decision theory accounting for individual differences in risk aversion, a two-step response-generating model is proposed to predict the expected answering patterns on given multiple-choice questions. The results of the simulations show that overall there are no substantial differences in the answering patterns for examinees at both ends of the ability continuum under two scoring procedures, suggesting that ability has a predominant effect on the response patterns. Compared to correction for guessing, elimination scoring leads to fewer full score response and more demonstration of partial knowledge, especially for examinees with intermediate success probabilities on the items. Only for those examinees, risk aversion has a decisive impact on the expected answering patterns.