Abstract :
A trial of pen-and-paper and online modes of a computing skills test was
conducted for volunteer students of ages 15–16 in New South Wales,
Australia. The tests comprised Matching, True/False and 4-option Multiple-
Choice items. The aims were to determine whether gender, socioeconomic
status (SES), or the type of item interacted with testing mode. No interactions
were found for gender and item type, but the SES interaction was statistically
significant. For low SES students, the online mode mean was 1 percent lower
than the pen-and-paper mean, whereas high SES students had near equivalent
means. These findings should be treated with caution as the groups in the
study were self-selected, rather than random samples from the student
population
