Perceptions of assessment demands in economics

Educational research based on the Student Experience of Learning framework argues that besides personal factors, students’ approaches to learning are greatly influenced by their perceptions of the learning environment and demands of the learning task. The relationships between students’ learning styles, assessment preferences, learning approaches, learning outcome and contextual factors have been found to be complex and not always consistent with expectations. It is argued that investigations of the functional relationships between personal, process and contextual factors should best be conducted within an assessment context to disentangle these complex relationships. This paper reports on the construction of an instrument to measure students’ perceptions of cognitive abilities assessed in economics in three assessment contexts. Data for constructing the items, and for calibrating and validation of the Perception of Assessment Demands construct were collected from introductory and intermediate level economics students at a university in a capital city in Australia. The refined instrument possesses good to excellent psychometric properties. Factorial structure of the construct reveals features consistent and inconsistent with previous studies. Further analysis was conducted at both the group and individual levels, and the results show consistency (within a student) and variations (across assessments) in students’ perceptions of assessment demands in economics.