Assessing student understanding of price and opportunity cost through a hybrid test instrument: An exploratory study

Abstract

This paper reports an exploratory empirical study of students’ ‘understanding’ of price and opportunity cost based on a hybrid test instrument which consisted of multiple choice (MC) questions that also required students to explain their answers through a constructed response (CR). Data were drawn from three cohorts of students: two from an Australian university and one from a U.S. university. The information provided by the CRs attached to the MC questions tends to support extant evidence of problems with the effectiveness of standard MC questions in assessing ‘understanding,’ especially of price. Additional econometric analysis suggests that MC and associated CR questions may not be as effective at capturing achievement of sophisticated conceptions or ‘understanding,’ compared with alternative assessment tasks such as problems and essays.