Equal Opportunity in the Classroom: Test Construction in a Diversity-Sensitive Environment

Abstract

Although civil rights groups have successfully challenged the fairness of tests used in admission decisions by universities from an equal opportunity perspective, testing practices used by professors in the classroom have gone largely unquestioned. In this study, levels of performance of a sample of 231 students in six human resource management classes were compared on two multiple-choice tests and one essay test. Comparisons of scores between men and women and between Whites and minorities over the multiple-choice tests yielded statistically insignificant results. In the essay test comparisons, females scored significantly higher than males, and Whites scored significantly higher than minority students. Implications of the findings are discussed and suggestions are offered for test construction to meet the diversity challenge in the classroom.