EFFECTS OF COACHING ON GRE APTITUDE TEST SCORES

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe controversy over the effectiveness of coaching for standardized admission tests has been fueled by studies that have sought dichotomous answers to questions that are more appropriately posed as ones of degree. Instead of asking categorically “Does coaching work?“, researchers would seem better advised to ask “How much time and effort, devoted to what kinds of coaching experiences, produce how much improvement in test performance?”To explore some relational answers, information on test preparation activities was collected from a large representative sample of candidates who took the GRE Aptitude Test in June 1980. About 3 percent of these candidates indicated that they had attended formal coaching programs for one or more sections of the test and provided information on the length, cost, and offerer of the courses.After adjusting for differences in the background characteristics of coached and uncoached students, effects on test scores were related to the length, the cost, and the type of programs offered. The effects on GRE verbal ability scores were not significantly related to the amount of coaching that examinees received. Quantitative coaching effects appeared to increase only slightly with time, but the relationship was not statistically significant. Effects on analytical ability scores, on the other hand, were related significantly to the length of coaching programs, through improved performance on two analytical item types, analysis of explanations and logical diagrams. These item types were shown previously to be susceptible to improvement through formal instructional intervention and have since been deleted from the test.Test performance was related to the kinds of coaching programs examinees attended only for the quantitative section of the test. With respect to the possibility that some kinds of test takers might profit more than others from coaching, exploratory analyses suggested that examinees intending to pursue higher‐level degrees may have benefited more than lower‐level degree seekers. This finding is consistent with the conjecture that highly motivated test takers may achieve greater effects from coaching than less motivated examinees.Overall, the data suggest that, when compared with the two highly susceptible item types that have been removed from the GRE Aptitude Test, the test item types in the current version of the test (now called the GRE General Test) appear to show relatively little susceptibility to formal coaching experiences of the kinds considered here.