Effects of Time Limits on Test Scores

Mercedes Kinney, Emily Parks, Melissa Shepherd, Miranda Oder, Rollens Hardy, Lynne
Chandler
Northwest Missouri State University

Introduction
• The purpose of this study was to find out if students do better on exams when
they believe they are not being timed
• One study found that due to timed tests, students with high test anxiety may
perform under their level of ability (Onwuegbuzie & Seaman, 1995)
• Another study found that high-test anxiety was not able to predict a low-test
performance according to Cohen et al (2008)
• Stress has a negative effect on memory (Tranel, Adolphs, & Buchanan, 2006)
Results
• We examined the effects of timing a test on test performance • When calculated as a percent correct out of the number of questions answered, t(32) = -1.03, p =
• Many different factors that can cause extreme test anxiety .31
• The timed condition answered a similar amount of questions correctly (M = 96%, SD = 4.4) as the
untimed condition (M = 97%, SD = 2.6)
Hypotheses • When calculated as a percent correct out of the total number of questions on the test, t(32) = 3.43, p
< .002
• The purpose of this study was to find out if students do better on exams when they are not • The timed condition correctly answered significantly more questions (M = 82%, SD = 16.00)
being timed compared in the untimed condition (M = 60%, SD = 21.00)
• We hypothesized that if participants know that they are being timed, then they will have a
lower test score than participants who do not know they are being timed Discussion
• We hypothesized that if the participants knew they were being timed then they would have lower
test scores than participants that did not know they were being timed
Method • Our hypothesis was not supported by the current study based on the results of our analysis
• Looking at the total number of questions on the test, it was found that participants in the timed
Participants group answered more questions than the untimed group
• Participants were 32 college students from Northwest Missouri State University • Subjects in a previous study were given a difficult test and on average those who were timed scored
• Ages ranged from 19 to 23 higher than those not being timed (Matarazzo, Ulett, Guze, & Saslow, 1954)
• Included 20 males and 12 females • Our research was supported by the study above when the amount of questions that were answered
• The subject pool was predominantly Caucasian is examined
• Participants volunteered to receive five extra credit points as part of their English Composition • One limitation being that our participants were recruited through convenience sampling, we
course should’ve given ourselves more time to recruit participants for a more random sampling
• Another limitation being a small sample size, we only have 32 when ideally this study should have
Materials
minimally had 60
• Multiplication test: this was used to measure participants test anxiety according to their test
• Final limitation being the easiness of the given test, ideally we would change the difficulty to make
scores. it more thought provoking
Procedure • Look more specifically at age range as well as competency of mathematics before conducting the
• Subjects were chosen with a convenience sample experiment
• Participants chose a slip of paper for a paper bag to indicate if they would be in Group A • Making the test more difficult to challenge the participants rather than have them simply recall the
(timed) or Group B (untimed) problems
• The participants were them given a 60 question multiplication test and had a two minute time • The participants preparedness also might determine the results of a future experiment
limit, whether they knew it or not • We set out to determine whether or not timed testing has a negative effect on student test
performance, the results of our research did not support our hypothesis