Efforts to use computers for diagnostic testing in education require appropriate psychometric and technological strategies and, equally important, good theoretical foundations as to what constitutes a diagnosis and how it is to be discerned in an examinee's performance. Although at present this combination is infrequent in education, for some years it has been in evidence in computer‐managed diagnosis in medicine. For comparable success in the field of education, it is argued that artificial intelligence algorithms may provide a suitable avenue for developing diagnostic testing further.
Summary. Using data obtained as part of the cross‐cultural IEA study on academic standards, the tendency of particular pupils to guess on multiple‐choice tests was measured using an index proposed by Ziller. The amount of guessing was found to increase with the amount of reading material each item contained. English school pupils appear to be more inclined to guess than are pupils in most other Western countries. Guessing is more frequent in the public sector of education than in the independent sector. Among 14‐year‐olds, boys were slightly, but consistently, more likely to guess than girls. This sex difference was not apparent among children aged 10.
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