Free response questions (FRQ) or essay questions are a type of open-ended question commonly used in schools to test students' learning, as well as in entrance exams and sometimes as part of job application or screening processes.
Description
Free response questions require test takers to respond to a question or open-ended prompt with a prose response. In addition to being graded for factual correctness, free response questions may also be graded for persuasiveness, style, and demonstrated mastery of the subject material. Free response questions are a common part of assessment tests in schools, as well as being part of standardized tests1 Essay questions are also sometimes included as part of a job interview2 or a school application process.3
Free response questions typically require little work for instructors to write, but can be difficult to grade consistently as they require subjective judgments. Free response tests are a relatively effective test of higher-level reasoning, as the format requires test-takers to provide more of their reasoning in the answer than multiple choice questions.4 Students, however, report higher levels of anxiety when taking essay questions as compared to short-response or multiple choice exams.5
See also
- Hanover Research[permanent dead link].
External links
- Learning materials related to Free response question at Wikiversity
References
Pinter, Brad; Matchock, Robert L.; Charles, Eric P.; Balch, William R. (January 2014). "A Cross-Sectional Evaluation of Student Achievement Using Standardized and Performance-Based Tests". Teaching of Psychology. 41 (1): 20–27. doi:10.1177/0098628313514174. ISSN 0098-6283. S2CID 145460705. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0098628313514174 ↩
Rao S. B, Pooja; Rasipuram, Sowmya; Das, Rahul; Jayagopi, Dinesh Babu (2017-11-03). "Automatic assessment of communication skill in non-conventional interview settings: A comparative study". Proceedings of the 19th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction. ICMI '17. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 221–229. doi:10.1145/3136755.3136756. ISBN 978-1-4503-5543-8. S2CID 3084268. 978-1-4503-5543-8 ↩
Ross, Paul (2005-03-15). "L1 Writing Experiences and L2 Writing Instruction: University Entrance Exams in Japan". Language and Culture: The Journal of the Institute for Language and Culture (in Japanese). 9: 41–55. https://konan-u.repo.nii.ac.jp/index.php?active_action=repository_view_main_item_detail&page_id=40&block_id=38&item_id=417&item_no=1 ↩
Tuckman, Bruce W. (October 1993). "The Essay Test: A Look at the Advantages and Disadvantages". NASSP Bulletin. 77 (555): 20–26. doi:10.1177/019263659307755504. ISSN 0192-6365. S2CID 143639361. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/019263659307755504 ↩
Sommer, Robert; Sommer, Barbara A. (2009-06-24). "The Dreaded Essay Exam". Teaching of Psychology. 36 (3): 197–199. doi:10.1080/00986280902959820. ISSN 0098-6283. S2CID 145664394. https://doi.org/10.1080/00986280902959820 ↩