Pace: An Alternative Measure of Student Question Response Time

In some professions, speed and accuracy are as important as acquired requisite knowledge and skills. The availability of computer-based testing now facilitates examination of these two important aspects of student performance. We found that student response times in a conventional non-speeded multiple-choice test, at both the global and individual question levels, closely approximated lognormal distributions. We propose a new measure, pace, which is derived from the survival function of these distributions for analysis of individual person response times. These pace estimates could be used both to rank and compare students; pace also performed maximally compared to other parameterizations in generalizability and dependability studies. While pace was very weakly related to person ability, there was no detectable relationship to question parameters of shift, natural logarithmic mean, or natural logarithmic standard deviation. That is, pace was a person-dependent, question-independent measure. Pace measurements were also successfully used as covariates in models for estimation of person response time to specified questions and person accuracy in response to specified questions. Thus, the analysis of pace can contribute significantly to comprehensive evaluation of student performance in both the speed and ability domains and is a requisite to best practice in testing and assessment.