Negotiations, Organizations, and Markets, Harvard Business School, Boston, MA 02163;
Santiago Centre for Experimental Social Sciences, Nuffield College, University of Oxford, Santiago 8340599, Chile.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2020 Apr 21;117(16):8794-8803. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1920945117. Epub 2020 Apr 6.
Multiple-choice examinations play a critical role in university admissions across the world. A key question is whether imposing penalties for wrong answers on these examinations deters guessing from women more than men, disadvantaging female test-takers. We consider data from a large-scale, high-stakes policy change that removed penalties for wrong answers on the national college entry examination in Chile. The policy change reduced a large gender gap in questions skipped. It also narrowed gender gaps in performance, primarily among high-performing test-takers, and in the fields of math, social science, and chemistry.
选择题考试在世界范围内的大学招生中起着至关重要的作用。一个关键问题是，在这些考试中对答错题目进行扣分，是否会比男性更能阻止女性猜测，从而使女性考生处于不利地位。我们考虑了智利一项大规模、高风险的政策变化的数据，该政策取消了全国大学入学考试中答错扣分的规定。政策的改变减少了一个很大的性别在跳过问题上的差距。它还缩小了性别差距在表现上，主要是在高表现的考生，以及在数学、社会科学和化学领域。
