An Investigation of the Differential Effort Received by Items on a Low-Stakes Computer-Based Test

In low-stakes testing, the motivation levels of examinees are often a matter of concern to test givers because a lack of examinee effort represents a direct threat to the validity of the test data. This study investigated the use of response time to assess the amount of examinee effort received by individual test items. In 2 studies, it was found that the strongest predictors of the effort received by items were item length (i.e., how much reading or scanning was required) and item position. In addition, it was found that by treating item responses resulting from rapid guesses as missing, item means and item-total correlations were differentially affected and test score reliability decreased, whereas validity increased. Several implications of these results for low-stakes testing are discussed.