Factors Affecting Exam Completion Speed, Exam Performance, and Nonexam Performance

This study investigates how factors such as student achievement goals for a course, language skills, outside work commitments, and test anxiety are related to performance on multiple-choice exams and nonexam assignments. The study also explores whether these factors explain the time taken to complete exams and whether exam completion speed is related to exam performance. We find that exam performance is negatively related to test anxiety and avoidance goals and positively related to study effort, performance approach goals, and English language skills. Performance on nonexam assignments is positively related to performance approach goals and a review-oriented test-taking strategy and related in an inverted U-shaped relationship to outside employment. Overall, the results suggest that students who are motivated to get good grades do the best—not those most engaged in the course or those interested in mastering the subject. Students who take longer to complete multiple-choice exams tend to be those who have weaker language skills, those with more test anxiety and those who utilize a review-oriented test-taking strategy. However, exam-taking speed is best viewed as a symptom of these factors; it is not related to exam performance when controlling for those factors