Differential Scoring Question Type for Skills Evaluation

Differential Scoring Question Type for Skills Evaluation

What is Differential Scoring?

• Differential scoring pattern is helpful in evaluating candidates' shades of competency by scoring answers based on their effectiveness or alignment with desired traits.

• It enables clients to identify candidates who demonstrate critical thinking and contextual awareness

Unlike traditional multiple-choice question (MCQ) assessments, this pattern assigns different scores to each option presented in the question scenario. It eliminates the concept of right and wrong answers and introduces an incremental scoring system that captures the desirability of each option. It is more about the most accurate answer rather than selecting a right or wrong answer.

How to use Differential Scoring feature as a User?

To be able to create questions with differential scoring individually,

1. Go to My Questions and click Add Question.

2. Click MCQ option from the options available in the dropdown menu.

3. You will be able to see the Differential Scoring option at the top with a checkbox/toggle to enable or disable the option.

Note: If the user does not select the toggle or checkbox, the user should continue to create MCQ with only 1 correct option.

4. If you enable the toggle button instead of providing an option to choose the radio button for the correct option, the system should enable the textbox to add points in front of the options. Each option will have points based on the accuracy of answers.

Note: Differential Scoring MCQ’s contain weightage for each option as it does not contain one correct answer.

5. It is mandatory to enter points for each option from 0 to 100. If point is not entered, the question is not saved or added to the question bank/library/database.

6. The total points cannot be edited and will auto-populate with the highest value in the options above.

7. When the question is saved in the question library, it should indicate the type of question and weightage of each option to the user.

How to bulk upload questions while creating a Differential Scoring Question?

1. An additional column should be added at the end to indicate whether the question type is a differential-scoring MCQ or a normal MCQ.

2. If the user adds MCQ question of a differential scoring type in the column “differential scoring” with a “Yes”, then the user has to leave column “Correct Answer” Blank. User will be allowed to upload questions with comma separated scores for the answers in “Score” Column.

3. The comma-separated scores will indicate scores for each of the options: A,B,C,D,E respectively. If user puts any content in the column “Correct Answer”, and the scores are put correctly in a comma-separated manner in the “Score” column, then the “Correct Answer” column should be ignored.

What can trigger error messages while uploading bulk questions?

1. If a column contains an answer option content but comma-separated values do not have any values, the user will not be allowed to upload the question. In such cases, user will receive an error message “Inconsistent Scores/Scores Absent”.

2. In case the column “Differential Scoring” contains Yes and there is no value put in the “Scores” column, then the system should not allow question upload and return an error: “No Scores have been provided in the question.”

3. If the column “Differential Scoring” is marked as “No” or if it is blank, then the question will be uploaded as a normal MCQ question.

4. If the column “Differential Scoring” is marked as No or blank and if there are comma-separated answers, the system should not upload the question and return an error “Multiple Correct Answers given for MCQ Question”.

For other question types, during bulk upload, marking “Yes”, “No” or “Blank” under “Differential Scoring” will not make any difference to the upload process.

Note:

1. The question should be shown along with points assigned to each option should be shown along with the overall score.
   

2. The assessment creation process will have no change.

3. There will be no change in the functioning of editing/proofreading tag functionality.

Negative Marking feature for Differential Scoring

1. You can enable or disable negative marking option within section setting.
   

2. User can select a section setting having Differential Scoring type of questions and enable negative marking option by selecting “Yes”.
   You can read a note on the screen: “Negative marking will be set for all the questions in this section, except for Differential Scoring question banks in this section?”

3. If you hover over the question tag, a pop up message is displayed: “The Differential Scoring questions contain weightage for each option. Therefore a Negative score is not possible.”
   

How to analyse score obtained by the candidate in the report?

1. Once you click “Questions” tab, you will be able to see the question type as Differential Scoring in the list of questions answered by the candidate, along with that a score should be indicated out of the overall score of the question.
   
2. You can filter the type of question in the report. Once a user selects Differential Scoring question type, only those type of questions should be visible.
   

The Result should be indicated as Correct only if the candidate selects any option strictly above 0.

Note:  If the question is not attempted by the user, the result will be indicated as wrong.