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IZA Discussion Paper No. 18283
November 2025
Can the Keyboard Beat the Good Old Pen? Computer-Based Testing and Students’ Performance
Pedro Freitas, Luis Catela Nunes, Ana B Reis, João Pereira dos Santos

Computer-based testing is increasingly being adopted by educational institutions worldwide. However, whether this transition from paper-based testing leads to different outcomes in student performance remains an open question. This paper assesses the impact of computer-based testing by examining a large-scale pilot programme for low-stakes exams implemented in Portugal in 2022. We leverage rich student-level data to implement pooled OLS and difference-in-differences approaches. Our results indicate that students who used computer-based testing performed worse than their peers using paper-based testing by 5 to 14 percentage points, on average. This negative effect is concentrated in specific question formats, namely questions requiring the analysis of figures. We discuss the implications of our findings for the large-scale implementation of computer-based testing.

Communications
Mark Fallak
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+352 585-855-526
World of Labour
Olga Nottmeyer
olga.nottmeyer@liser.lu
+352 585-855-501
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Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

The IZA@LISER Network is a global community of scholars dedicated to excellence in labor economics and related fields, now coordinated at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) following its transition from Bonn.

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