Risk Taking and Test-Wiseness of Chinese Students

Abstract

Eighty-six male and forty-five female 12th grade Chinese students took the Standard Educational Intelligence Test which contains measures of risk-taking and test-wiseness. The reliability (.88) and the mean (.68) of the risk measure were the same magnitudes as that reported for 12th grade American students. Further analysis of the data indicated that sex and risk-taking, and penalty-experience and risk-taking were not related, but that the test-taking experience and risk were weakly related. The Kuder-Richardson number 20 values for the four TW subscales were low. The mean scores for all four TW subscales were lower for Chinese Ss than for American Ss. Furthermore, the mean score for the stem-option scale was essentially equal to chance, and the mean score for the specific-determiner scale was even less than chance. In two separate sex by test-experience and sex by penalty-experience multivariate analyses of variance, none of the relationships appeared to be significant.