A Description of What Happens When an Examinee Takes a Multiple‐Choice Reading Comprehension Test

This study investigated the strategies a group of college students used to complete a portion of a standardized reading comprehension test. Twenty‐six students were randomly assigned to either an introspective interview, in which the subjects explained to a researcher what they were doing and thinking as they read the test passages and answered the multiple‐choice questions, or a retrospective interview, in which the students completed the test without interruption and then recounted for the researcher how they had gone about the task. Data analysis resulted in the identification of three broad categories of processing behavior: an overall approach to the test task, reading strategies, and test‐taking strategies. In addition, difficulties encountered by the subjects were identified. Results indicate that the common element in each subject's approach to the test was a focus on getting to the questions as quickly as possible and then using the questions to direct a search of the passage to locate the best possible information to answer the questions. The implications of these results for better understanding the relationship between test‐taking behavior and reading are discussed.