Abstract

CALVO DIAZ, Karen; ROJAS ROJAS, Guaner; MARTINEZ ALPIZAR, Diana  and  SOLANO MORAGA, Sigrid. Typographic marking of emphasis on reasoning items in an admission test. Innovaciones Educativas [online]. 2023, vol.25, n.39, pp.36-48. ISSN 2215-4132.  http://dx.doi.org/10.22458/ie.v25i39.4672.

This article is the result of an investigation on the relevance of typographic marking in verbal and mathematical reasoning items of the Academic Aptitude Test (PAA: Spanish acronyms) of the University of Costa Rica. The objective is to gather evidence on the influence of the marking (bold, underline and capital letters) on the instruction of the selected items and to observe if there are variations in the technical properties when these marks of emphasis are present or not. From an exploratory study, with a qualitative approach, information was collected from interviews with a group of first-time students entering the university for 2019. The analysis focused on the particles ''No'', ''False'', ''True'' ''Certainty'' and ''Contradicts'' and the reasons for maintaining their marking, according to the people interviewed, obeyed to three fundamental reasons: 1. It is a strategy for highlighting key words such as negations. 2. It clarifies the question or instruction of the item. 3. It allows attention to be maintained during reading. The main results show that there is no significant difference between maintaining and eliminating marking regardless of the type of item and population, so that its use should be dispensed with for a standardized test such as the PPA.

Keywords : Aptitude test; interview; reasoning; university; typography; admission.

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