# Investigating students seriousness during selected conceptual inventory surveys

## TL;DR

This study evaluates methods to estimate student engagement levels in conceptual inventory surveys, comparing three seriousness tests across different assessments and simulated answer patterns to improve interpretation of survey results.

## Contribution

It introduces and applies three novel seriousness tests to assess student engagement in conceptual surveys, enhancing the understanding of response validity.

## Key findings

- Pattern recognition test effectively identifies disengaged students.
- Easy questions test correlates with overall survey engagement.
- Uncommon answers test detects random response patterns.

## Abstract

Conceptual inventory surveys are routinely used in education research to identify student learning needs and assess instructional practices. Students might not fully engage with these instruments because of the low stakes attached to them. This paper explores tests that can be used to estimate the percentage of students in a population who might not have taken such surveys seriously. These three seriousness tests are the pattern recognition test, the easy questions test, and the uncommon answers test. These three tests are applied to sets of students who were assessed either by the Force Concept Inventory, the Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism, or the Brief Electricity and Magnetism Assessment. The results of our investigation are compared to computer simulated populations of random answers.