Has increasing the use of scenarios in multiple choice questions made exams more challenging?
Although there is a belief that introducing more scenario based questions will make things more challenging for students, this may well have been the case, but there is no hard evidence of a difference in the pass rate for this type of question as compared with other types, from analysis undertaken. There was not a significantly different performance on ‘scenario’ questions as compared with other questions in exams up to and including December 2008. ‘Scenarios’ on this paper are generally short. A number of changes have affected the dynamics of this paper – new question providers have introduced a wider range of question styles, there has been an evolution in tuition providers’ approach to preparing students and students taking the paper have benefited from this. The increase in the proportion of scenario based questions in F1 has been in response to a need to better align the paper demand with Papers F2 and F3 – where the focus of these questions is more about ‘application’ of knowled
