CHOICE AMONG ESSAY TOPICS - IMPACT ON PERFORMANCE AND VALIDITY

This study assessed the ability of history students to choose the essa y topic on which they can get the highest score. A second, equally imp ortant question was whether the score on the chosen topic was more hig hly related to other indicators of proficiency in history than the sco re on the unchosen topic. Overall, for both U.S. and European history, scores were about one third of a standard deviation higher for the pr eferred topic than for the other topic, For U.S. history, about 32 Cic of the students made the wrong choice; that is, 32% got a higher scor e on the other topic than on the preferred topic. In European history, 29% made the wrong choice. In the U.S. history sample, the preferred essay correlated .40 with an external criterion score, compared to .34 for the other essay; in the European history sample, the preferred es say correlated .52 with the external criterion, compared to .44 for th e other topic.