Examination Questions and Relative Student Performance

This note reports the results of a study of the effect of the content of examination questions drawn from standard test banks on the relative performance of students in a principles of economics class. Specifically, we tried to determine whether the distribution of scores on an examination consisting of technical questions which mainly required students to recognize and identify correct technical relationships would be substantially different from the distribution of scores on an examination consisting of application problems where a student not only must know a technical relationship but also know when and how to apply it.