TY - JOUR
T1 - Influence of question format and text availability on the assessment of expository text comprehension
AU - Ozuru, Yasuhiro
AU - Best, Rachel
AU - Bell, Courtney
AU - Witherspoon, Amy
AU - McNamara, Danielle S.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES R305G020018-02 and IES R305G040046). Ideas expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IES.
PY - 2007
Y1 - 2007
N2 - This study examines how passage availability and reading comprehension question format (open-ended vs. multiple-choice) influence question answering. In two experiments, college undergraduates read an expository passage and answered open-ended and multiple-choice versions of text-based, local, and global bridging inference questions. Half the participants were allowed to refer to the passage when answering the questions and half were not. Participants' prior domain knowledge relating to the text contents was assessed using multiple-choice and open-ended questions. Correlation-based analyses in the two experiments indicated: (a) a decline in the relationship between prior domain knowledge and comprehension when the passage was available during question answering; and (b) a high correlation between multiple-choice and open-ended question answering performance when the passage was not available for reference. Overall the results indicate that the nature of the reading comprehension assessment is influenced by the specific task with which comprehension is assessed.
AB - This study examines how passage availability and reading comprehension question format (open-ended vs. multiple-choice) influence question answering. In two experiments, college undergraduates read an expository passage and answered open-ended and multiple-choice versions of text-based, local, and global bridging inference questions. Half the participants were allowed to refer to the passage when answering the questions and half were not. Participants' prior domain knowledge relating to the text contents was assessed using multiple-choice and open-ended questions. Correlation-based analyses in the two experiments indicated: (a) a decline in the relationship between prior domain knowledge and comprehension when the passage was available during question answering; and (b) a high correlation between multiple-choice and open-ended question answering performance when the passage was not available for reference. Overall the results indicate that the nature of the reading comprehension assessment is influenced by the specific task with which comprehension is assessed.
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U2 - 10.1080/07370000701632371
DO - 10.1080/07370000701632371
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:38349070466
SN - 0737-0008
VL - 25
SP - 399
EP - 438
JO - Cognition and Instruction
JF - Cognition and Instruction
IS - 4
ER -