Does reviewing previous answers during multiple‐choice exams help examinees increase their final score? This article formalizes the question using a rigorous causal framework, the potential outcomes framework. Viewing examinees’ reviewing status as a treatment and their final score as an outcome, the article first explains the challenges of identifying the causal effect of answer reviewing in regular exam‐taking settings. In addition to the incapability of randomizing the treatment selection (reviewing status) and the lack of other information to make this selection process ignorable, the treatment variable itself is not fully known to researchers. Looking at examinees’ answer sheet data, it is unclear whether an examinee who did not change his or her answer on a specific item reviewed it but retained the initial answer (treatment condition) or chose not to review it (control condition). Despite such challenges, however, the article develops partial identification strategies and shows that the sign of the answer reviewing effect can be reasonably inferred. By analyzing a statewide math assessment data set, the article finds that reviewing initial answers is generally beneficial for examinees.

中文翻译：

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在多项选择题考试中部分确认答案复习效果

在多项选择考试中复习先前的答案是否有助于考生提高最终成绩？本文使用严格的因果框架（潜在结果框架）来对问题进行形式化。文章将考生的复习状态作为一种治疗方法，并将其最终分数作为结果，本文首先解释了在常规考试环境中确定答案复习的因果关系所面临的挑战。除了不能随机化治疗选择（审查状态）以及缺乏使该选择过程可忽略的其他信息外，研究人员还不完全了解治疗变量。看考生的答卷数据，尚不清楚未更改特定项目答案的应试者是否复习了该答案，但保留了初始答案（治疗条件）还是选择不复习（对照条件）。尽管存在这些挑战，但本文还是提出了部分识别策略，并表明可以合理地推断答案复习效果的迹象。通过分析全州范围的数学评估数据集，本文发现，复习初始答案通常对应试者有利。