Student Major/Year in School
Psychology, third year
Faculty Mentor Information
Gary Brase, psychological sciences, arts and sciences
Abstract
Moving to the Head of the Class: Exam Study Decisions When Courses Grade on a Curve
Lindsay Chassay, Kevin L. Kenney, & Gary L. Brase
Department of Psychological Sciences
College of Arts and Sciences
Poor grades may result in lost scholarships, academic probation, or even removal from school. Aside from intellectual ability, course grades are the result of many decisions during a semester, including when and how to study for exams. This experiment investigated how students make decisions when their course grade is either based on set performance standards or on their performance relative to their classmates (i.e., curved”). Because grades are confidential, an individual student cannot be certain of their relative rank in a pure curved grading situation, meaning that any goal to achieve a certain letter grade is inherently fuzzy. Seventy-eight Kansas State University students (55 women, 23 men; Mage = 20.0 years, SDage = 2.6 years) participated in this online study for partial credit towards a psychology course requirement. Participants were randomly assigned to make studying decisions in a imagined class with either a normally-distributed (curved) grading distribution or a block (set threshold) grading distribution. Participants then completed 21 trials of a decision under risk task of choosing between studying for an exam or going out with friends. Each trial presented a choice between a guaranteed exam score if they chose to study or a 50% chance to receive a better grade and a 50% chance to receive a worse grade if they chose to go out with friends. Contrary to the hypothesis, there were no differences in decision patterns between the two grade distribution conditions. However, and as hypothesized, participants were more likely to choose the guaranteed option as the expected value of the choices increased and as the difference between the higher risk 50-50 outcomes increased.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Recommended Citation
Chassay, Lindsay (2019). "Moving to the Head of the Class: Exam Study Decisions When Courses Grade on a Curve," Kansas State University Undergraduate Research Conference. https://newprairiepress.org/ksuugradresearch/2019/posters/27
Moving to the Head of the Class: Exam Study Decisions When Courses Grade on a Curve
Moving to the Head of the Class: Exam Study Decisions When Courses Grade on a Curve
Lindsay Chassay, Kevin L. Kenney, & Gary L. Brase
Department of Psychological Sciences
College of Arts and Sciences
Poor grades may result in lost scholarships, academic probation, or even removal from school. Aside from intellectual ability, course grades are the result of many decisions during a semester, including when and how to study for exams. This experiment investigated how students make decisions when their course grade is either based on set performance standards or on their performance relative to their classmates (i.e., curved”). Because grades are confidential, an individual student cannot be certain of their relative rank in a pure curved grading situation, meaning that any goal to achieve a certain letter grade is inherently fuzzy. Seventy-eight Kansas State University students (55 women, 23 men; Mage = 20.0 years, SDage = 2.6 years) participated in this online study for partial credit towards a psychology course requirement. Participants were randomly assigned to make studying decisions in a imagined class with either a normally-distributed (curved) grading distribution or a block (set threshold) grading distribution. Participants then completed 21 trials of a decision under risk task of choosing between studying for an exam or going out with friends. Each trial presented a choice between a guaranteed exam score if they chose to study or a 50% chance to receive a better grade and a 50% chance to receive a worse grade if they chose to go out with friends. Contrary to the hypothesis, there were no differences in decision patterns between the two grade distribution conditions. However, and as hypothesized, participants were more likely to choose the guaranteed option as the expected value of the choices increased and as the difference between the higher risk 50-50 outcomes increased.
