Effects of student-written test questions on student test performance were examined in an Introductory Psychology class. Before each of three tests, randomly assigned students wrote essay questions, multiple-choice questions, or no questions. All tests contained essay and multiple-choice items but no questions written by students. Question writers performed significantly better than nonwriters on the first two tests; the difference on the third test was marginally significant. No differences were found between students who wrote essay and those who wrote multiple-choice questions. Question writing appears to be an effective study technique.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AtkinsonR. L.AtkinsonR. C.SmithE. E.HilgardE. R. (1987). Introduction to psychology (9th ed.). New York: Harcourl Brace Jovanovich.
2.
DennerP. R.RickardsJ. P. (1987). A developmental comparison of the effects of provided and generated questions on text recall. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 12, 135–146.
3.
FraseL. T.SchwartzB. J. (1975). Effect of question production and answering on prose recall. Journal of Educational Psychology, 67, 628–635.
4.
HamakerC. (1986). The effects of adjunct questions on prose learning. Review of Educational Research, 56, 212–242.
5.
HamiltonR. J. (1985). A framework for the evaluation of the effectiveness of adjunct questions and objectives. Review of Educational Research, 55, 47–85.
6.
HebbD. O.DonderiD. C. (1987). Textbook of psychology (4th ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
7.
LehmanJ. R.LehmanK. M. (1984). The relative effects of experimenter and subject generated questions on learning from museum case exhibits. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 21, 931–935.
8.
LyngR. D.GerowJ. R. (1986). How to succeed in college (2nd ed.). Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman.
9.
MartinM. A. (1985). Students' applications of sell-questioning study techniques: An investigation of their efficacy. Reading Psychology, 6, 69–83.
