I have heard that negative marking of multiple-choice questions (MCQs) can have undesirable results. What is the research on this?
Negative marking, or formula scoring, means that some marks are deducted from overall test score for each wrong answer. This contrasts with right scoring in which nothing is deducted for a wrong answer. Theoretically, negative marking is intended to discourage guessing. The largest systematic study comparing right scoring and negative marking was one done by the Educational Testing Service in 1981 (Angoff and Schrader). The first ETS study looked at 6260 final year high school students (around 17 years old) taking the Scholastic Aptitude Test and at 2306 students taking the Chemistry Advanced Placement Test. They administered two versions of the tests with rights scoring directions or formula scoring (negative marking) directions. They then scored all the tests using both scoring methods. This allowed them to estimate whether examinees changed their performance due to directions, and whether the results changed significantly due to scoring algorithm. Overall, SAT results showed that us
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