Experimental Evidence on Policies Aimed at Closing the Gender Gap in Willingness to Guess on Multiple-Choice Tests

Katherine Baldiga Coffman

Working Paper | 2016

Experimental Evidence on Policies Aimed at Closing the Gender Gap in Willingness to Guess on Multiple-Choice Tests

Abstract

Research has shown that women skip more questions than men on multiple-choice tests with penalties for wrong answers. We propose and test five policy changes aimed at eliminating this source of gender bias in test scores. Our data show that simply removing the penalty for wrong answers reduces the number of questions skipped by test-takers; however, in this treatment, women still skip more questions than men. We identify two other effective interventions, both of which maintain the standard scoring structure of multiple-choice tests (penalties for wrong answers), reduce the number of questions skipped by test-takers, and eliminate the gender gap.

Keywords: Competition; Behavior; Decision Choices and Conditions; Gender;

Language: English

Format: Print

Citation:

Coffman, Katherine Baldiga. "Experimental Evidence on Policies Aimed at Closing the Gender Gap in Willingness to Guess on Multiple-Choice Tests." Working Paper, August 2016.

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Experimental Evidence on Policies Aimed at Closing the Gender Gap in Willingness to Guess on Multiple-Choice Tests

Abstract

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