Relation between item format and gender gap in the test of economic-civic competence

What is it about?

Studies indicate that male students outperform female students in economic literacy and that a specific item format (selected-response, constructed-response) favours either males or females. We analyse the relationship between item format and gender in the test of economic-civic competence (WBK-T2). Our results indicate that the balanced test form of the WBK-T2 regarding selected-response and constructed-response items does overcome the gender gap in overall test scores and format-related test scores for students with prior economic knowledge. However, this does not apply for students without prior knowledge in economics.

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