5 Ways to Eliminate Online Testing Bias

Most companies, institutions, and organizations today aspire to build diverse and inclusive working environments and you’re likely in charge of doing the same in your testing and exam program. To honor the diversity of your working community and guarantee fair and equitable hiring and promotion practices, you need to closely examine your online skills assessment programs to root out any hint of testing bias.

Often an employee’s ability to grow and advance within a company is tied to skills assessment. Eliminating bias helps level the playing field so that everyone has the same opportunity for employment and promotion if they’re able to master new skills without cultural, socio-economic, or racial differences being a barrier to their success.

Bias is defined as a strong feeling or prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way that is considered unfair. Because bias can negatively impact both a test candidate’s experience when sitting for an exam and just as importantly, the final group test results, it’s in everyone’s best interest to identify and eliminate bias when you create tests.

1. 1. Adaptive testing: you can help make tests and exams fair by designing them so they build on the individual’s ability as they progress through the questions. This type of test delivers the next questions from a carefully crafted bank of questions based on the previous answers, engagement level, and learning style. Many online testing platforms offer the ability to design adaptive tests.
   2. Accessible learning and testing materials: beyond utilizing the robust learning module technology available in testing and exam platforms like Gauge, you may also need to provide every person who will be tested a device and high-speed internet (onsite or to take home) to ensure they can easily access the learning materials regardless of their personal circumstances. These materials also need to accommodate differently-abled individuals, whether they are hearing or vision impaired, unable to use a keyboard or have another ability barrier.
   3. Multiple Languages: many online testing and exam platforms make it easy for you to deal with language-barrier bias by offering learning and testing materials translated in the test-taker’s first language.
   4. Online Proctoring: test monitoring helps ensure that the test-taking is experienced fairly by everyone. Be sure your online proctoring service guarantees that livestream proctors and post-test reviewers are trained to avoid bias and that any AI augmented online proctoring service you use is developed to eliminate bias when monitoring behaviors.
   5. Bake in test equity from the start: you can avoid damaging employee motivation and morale by evaluating your learning materials and exam questions for bias before you ever use them. Add in a review process using a diverse panel of individuals who are subject matter experts from a wide variety of backgrounds to look at each question closely. Use every panel member’s feedback to edit your materials until they are free of bias.

Too often, testing managers wait to address issues of bias until they have results data. When results show particular groups of individuals, categorized by race, religion, or gender, consistently score lower than other groups, the test questions must be examined through multiple lenses and rewritten to eliminate the bias. Meanwhile those team members or potential employees who tested poorly cannot advance, when fairly-designed materials may have provided a more positive result. Have your review team ask these questions to help identify and eliminate testing bias in your online skills assessment program:

• • Could the concepts or questions offend or unfairly penalize someone on the basis of gender, race, religion, or ethnicity?
  • Do the concepts covered exist in every candidate’s language and culture?
  • Are these concepts easily understood in those languages and cultures?
  • Are these concepts translatable?

There are more in-depth ways to build test questions that we will share in another blog post, but these five principals are a great starting point for creating exams that serve your organization and your people without bias. If you’d like to learn more about how Gauge can help you streamline your skills learning and create tests and exams in the most equitable way possible, we’d love to talk with you.