Empirical Estimates of Intercorrelations among the Components of Scores on Multiple-Choice Tests

Abstract
College students were instructed to indicate on various multiple-choice tests whether they “knew the answer” or “guessed” each item, and the results were treated as estimated true and error components of scores. The values of the intercorrelations of these components were similar to those given by a computer program described previously. The values found for all tests were consistent with the assumption that test scores consist of both independent and non-independent components of error and that the non-independent error component is relatively large.