Test taking: every, never, none

On answers. We like and at the same time don’t like answering and getting feedback depending on whether it’s reassuring or unsettling. To answer a question is a moment of confrontation and negotiation, in short: labour. We try to select the answers that show us in the best light. Generally, response options are designed for standard scoring with dichotomous or multi-streamed scales relating to endorsement, frequency, intensity or comparison. A large volume of test questions is linked the psychometric Likert scale which often shows five balanced positive or negative options[1] .

As for my enquiry, I’m not looking at a test purpose or net efficiency of questionnaires. I’m rather concerned with the “relative” importance we assign to our answers, making informed or situation-based choices or simply replying out of the blue. Do we really distinguish between gradual nuances of reply options – for example when it comes to a scales of ‘trueness’ and optional items such as ‘true’ or ‘definitely true’? To say something is significant often implies an importance or relevance for decision-making. And how much is answering a game and guess – escaping a formal set up and adopting everyday behaviour.

My work ‘Good testing’ is based on a commonly used response scale highlighted by a randomly appearing light (‘tick’) underneath. Awaiting the next lit option our decision-making mode attempts to anticipate which one is next. There is no particular question to answer. Good testing supplies random answers to many. Accentuating notions of game and guess this work stands for considered or spontaneous responses. In fact even if you do not have one, it doesn’t stop and suggests another random answer. Just in case.

[1] Burns, Alvin; Burns, Ronald (2008). Basic Marketing Research (Second ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Education. p. 250

While looking into gestures that form part of how we communicate in wider sense of ‘test’ situations my attention circled around nodding. Most commonly, it indicates agreement or acceptance. Even a non-verbal nodding gesture is a sign for acknowledgement. Furthermore, nodding is a key gesture in conversations and argumentation that aim to convince. Generally, nodding is quite natural for us to do or to follow and tends to stimulate levels of agreement.  As one of the key ideas for interpersonal communication both in formal and informal ways it made me think of processing advice on nodding in the format of a recorded paragraph.

“Nodding is a good strategy. Nod occasionally while you listen. It makes you more likely to agree. Nod a lot in front of others. It is natural for them to do the same. Nod while you talk. It makes you extra convincing. Nod frequently during conversations. The persons you are talking to will find it hard to not nod themselves. It makes them more likely to agree to what you are saying. Try. Keep nodding!”

Test taking has become a valuable skill. There is endless expertise insisting to best prepare test taker; the most common 5 (most popular 10, top 20, essential 31 etc) interview questions to best prepare for all kind of scenarios, best case, worst case. In fact, a lot of the scripted advice follows fairly common sense, some obviously produce notions of benefits yet I guess simply serve a reassuring and directing purpose.

Melting in some of my own professional experience the listed phrases soon made me think of text-processing and injecting humour. As their focus is interview preparation I kept looking for a tool or mechanism to (re-)introduce and enable a self-operated training of those instructions in the everyday. It made me think of flash cards. Widely used as a kind of mental exercise flash cards enable a reviewing of information in intervals.

I have turned a selected cross-section of instructions ranging from of how to prepare, arrive, respond, behave, attend – the dos and don’ts into a set of “interval flashcards”.

#questions

In process. Exploring ways of untesting is for me about blurring the line between the straightforward and counterproductive. There are always questions we find odd, unrelated or predicative of a standard reply. I started taking questions out of their context and made them overlap. Likewise an unstandardising of questions by rephrasing and altering takes them out of an administered frame.

Being aware of and intentionally operating outside the professional set up I shifted verbal structures to undo a closed or open question, redirected the purpose or phrased them ambiguously. Leaving knowledge tests aside, what is a question’s impact if we don’t know what to reply or are unsure of an answer? Is it a matter of being irritated, of guessing, ignoring or possibly challenging ourselves?

Along this processing I arrived at a set of questions that hover between the straightforward and counterproductive. They will appear on walls, left there to get noticed at some point. As for me, I do not need to obtain the physical outcome; a typed, written or spoken answer from the audience. Rather, I suggest to eye-catch the questions while passing by or pausing to reread and think off what might be a “good” answer if there is any. [chapter on answers to follow]

Tests, tests, tests. From formal assessments for health, care, school etc. and top of the list work, to personality tests to daily life quizzes – we are being constantly assessed and increasingly fascinated to question-testing ourselves. Institutional tests considered as mandatory and frequent quality gates programming us from early on. Their set up is administered and decisions on the test takers are based on scoring of answers.

Nevertheless, at our leisure we increasingly opt for self-reporting of personal information to compare or entertain ourselves or seeking more serious answers for our self-concept. According to social comparison theory (Festinger 1954) we are looking for self-evaluation in comparing ourselves to others. Looking at the test takers their expectation and anxiety levels push for a self-testing in prospect of new personal insight. The drive for reassurance of who we are (or in fact, think we are) forms part of the ongoing test taking agenda.

Also, there is a common underlying anxiety when being confronted with questions related to tests, tentatively negative. Not only is our knowledge or understanding on test; it considerably alludes to the personal and our self-concept.

However, standardised tests gain their power from uniformity including standardised questions and effective answering mechanisms. So to start with, I have been looking into familiar test formats and situations, the nature of questions placed and array of corresponding response patterns. Whether interview, paper based questionnaire or online quiz there is both trust in the professional administered process and doubt of its guarantee.

Comparing the way questions appear across areas I became interested in processing by un-testing and unstandardising.