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Abstract To maximise multiple choice test scores under formula scoring, students must be able to monitor their knowledge level, reporting correct answers and withholding incorrect ones. Importantly though, neither metacognitive monitoring nor optimal criterion setting has received much attention in the formula-scoring literature. The present research examined the role that both these parameters have on obtained test score. Students wrote three exams under formula-scoring rules, and from these data, we created bias profiles using methodology developed by Higham (2007), which allowed us to estimate the optimal number of questions that students needed to answer to maximise their scores. The results indicated that higher scoring students monitored their knowledge best, but that all students tended to guess too often, lowering their test scores. This conservatism maintained despite feedback from previous tests. The results also showed that monitoring is a stable participant skill that generalises across tests. Notes 1Technically, such discrimination is known as response-contingent, or Type 2 SDT. For further description and discussion regarding Type 2 SDT, see Banks (Citation1970), Clarke, Birdsall, and Tanner (Citation1959), Galvin, Podd, Drga, and Whitmore (Citation2003), and Higham (Citation2002, 2007). 2We make no assumptions about the monitoring mechanism at this stage other than it is used to assign confidence to the question alternatives. For example, the mechanism might operate consciously or unconsciously; similarly, the assignment process might be exhaustive or terminate once a candidate of reportable confidence has been found. These are important details that we will need to ascertain at some point in the future, but they are not critical to the current research. 3Although a bonus was offered for correct guesses in the present study, the pattern of results is very similar to Higham's (2007), in which no such bonus was offered. Hence, we do not believe that the results obtained in the current research are idiosyncratic.
Higham et al. (Sun,) studied this question.