Does putting a time limit on tests effect your grade?

[vanessawur]

Hypothesis: If putting a time limit on tests is related to your final grade, then subjects whom have a time llimit will perform worse.

My problem is that I don't know how wI should test my subjects. I was planning on having a writing test that was based on all of the basic subjects in school, maybe 5-10 problems on each one. Then I one have 5 students take the test without limit....

NOW I'M STUCK

I don't know whether to take a new group with the time limit, and if those people might or might not be as intellectual as the first group, or if I should just keep the same people from the first time, and bring them back after a week or so with a time limit. Maybe they will still remember what they put the last time, which would effect even needing the time limit.

still open to other suggestions :]

[MelissaB]

Vanessa,

It's very good of you to have identified this as a problem on your own! You are right, if you choose different people they may have a different average performance on the test.

There are two ways to get around this: First, try to test as many people as possible. If you test 30 people rather than 5, you stand a better chance of being able to compare two different groups. Second, you can give the same group of people a test that is similar in difficulty, but is actually different. For example, if you have a question on the first test saying divide 214 by 5, you can ask the students to divide 148 by 6 on the second test. Make sense?

Personally, I would encourage doing both--getting a larger sample size and using the same group for the two different tests. See if you can't enlist the help of some teachers--they should have grade-appropriate tests and may be able to give you a range of questions that are of similar difficulty and test similar things.

[tdaly]

Vanessa,

n addition to asking your teacher(s) for a couple of grade appropriate tests of the same difficulty, I would also ask you teacher to talk to the other teachers in the grade your are testing to see if they would be willing to administer the tests to their classes. This is an easy way to get a large sample size; I know several students who have done this and had wonderful support from their teachers. If the teachers are willing to administer the tests, you will need to send home a note with each of the students telling their parents about the tests. The parents/guardians of the students would need to sign and return the note, giving permission for their child to participate. (When you are doing science projects using people, you need to get their permission. This is called informed consent.) Talk to your teacher about the possibility of doing something along these lines.

Let me know if I can be of any further assistance!

[vanessawur]

Thank you a billion times to the point where it's annoying! omg this helped a ton. thank you, thank you, thank you!