Does It Matter if Examinee Motivation Is Measured before or after A Low-Stakes Test? A Moderated Mediation Analysis

ABSTRACT

The indirect effect of perceived test importance on test performance via examinee effort is often modeled using importance and effort scores measured after test completion, which does not align with their theoretical temporal ordering. These retrospectively measured scores may be influenced by examinees’ test performance. To investigate the impact of timing of measurement, college students were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions: (a) importance and effort were measured retrospectively, (b) importance and effort were measured retrospectively and importance was measured prospectively, and (c) importance and effort were measured retrospectively and prospectively. The unstandardized indirect effect was invariant across conditions when modeling prospective and retrospective scores. Priming examinees via prospectively measuring importance and effort did not affect the interrelations among performance and retrospective importance and effort (i.e., invariant indirect effect). Priming did lead to higher average test performance. Thus, priming may provide a cheap intervention for increasing test performance.

Notes

¹ The relatively small within-condition sample size and high number of parameters estimated in a full SEM that incorporates measurement models (importance, effort, and performance) made estimation of a full SEM impractical.

² The nonsignificant χ² value associated with the completely mediated model indicates the partial meditation model, which is just-identified, cannot fit significantly better than the completely mediated model.