TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Freitas, Pedro
AU  - Nunes, Luis Catela
AU  - Reis, Ana B
AU  - Santos, João Pereira dos
        TI  - Can the Keyboard Beat the Good Old Pen? Computer-Based Testing and Students’ Performance
        PY  - 2025/Nov/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 18283
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp18283
        AB  - 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.
        KW  - student performance
KW  - paper-based testing
KW  - computer-based testing
        ER  -