Technical Report - International Military Testing Association

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problem with such an ammption is that there lo virtually no sotieftctory
research defining creativeness. Usually the people who sccre high. on so
called “creativityI’ tests are aimply the ones we call creative. In fact,
there is considerable evidence to indicate that creativity teal& arc not
actually measuring creativity as a personality trait (Thorndike, 1963).
There is no evidence from carefully conducted and logically interpreted
research to indicate that objective tests stifle the creative person.
Roffmsnn’s charge is what he thinks should be fact rather than research
data. In other words, Roffmann has the idea that merely because multiplechoice
tests are highly structured, the examinee has nc opportunity tc
expr.?ss himself. Nothing could be further from the truth, but the degree
to which the examinee can express his knowledge depends on the skill and
the data of the test writer.
In his second assumption, Roffmann states that multiple choice tests,
,I . ..penalize the candidate who perceives subtle points unnoticed by less
able people including the test makers. They are apt to be superficial
and intellectually dishonest with questions made ortifically difficult
by means of ambiguity becnuse genuinely searching questions did not
readily fit into the multiple choice format.” In this assmption the
grent amount of careful research actually going into the construction
and validation of a teat item is completely ignored. Naturally, dierractors
are written purposely to “fool” the less knovledgoa’ble examinee.
information about the responses to items m*de by persons of different
levels of knowledge indicates without n doubt that the degree of ambiguity
perceived by an examinee is inversely related to his knowLedge of the
subject matter, This simply menns that the less one knows the more
ambiguous the question appears. Yet, Hoffmann state6 (p. 67), The more
one knows about the subject the uarc glaring the ambiguities become.”
Of course Roffmann doea not support his assumption with evidence;
nevertheless, this charge is the one with which we are moat often hit.
He saye that the most serious consequence of test ambiguity is that it
penalizes the gifted and talented examinee. In Hoffmann’ view, how does
this discrimination occur? When first confronted vith the alternative
answera to a question, the “deep” examinee, as Hoffmann calls the gifted
and talented, analyzes the alternatives more carefully than does the
*‘sup’ -ficial” exsminee. Naturally, such careful scrutinizing takes tfme,
and the first penalty occurs.
Secondly, the “deep” student is much more
likely to perceive the ambiguities and, as a result, spends more time
trying to determine exactly what the test author had in mind. Furthermore,
according to Roffmann, the “deep” examinee’s motlvetion to perform
well tends to be reduced as he sees more clearly the superficiality and
ineptness of the test writer’s approach. Even more damaging, the gifted
examinee is more likely to discover a “better” al.ternative than the keyed
response.
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