Using "you" as a subject in biology assessment questions: examining student preferences for second-person framing

In college biology courses, exams and quizzes are often used to assess students' knowledge and performance. Since assessments are a crucial part of biology classes, there has been a wide range of work examining how assessment questions are written, revealing that small changes in how such questions are worded may have large impacts on students' reading comprehension and performance. One aspect that instructors consider when writing a question is subject framing, i.e., which individual, if any, is being placed as the focal point of the question. In this study, we focus on the following subject framings, an authentic scientist, a classmate name, or the second-person "you," referring to the reader. Past work suggests variable subject framing can impact students' preferences, perceptions, and how well they can see themselves in the questions. In this study, we utilize semistructured interviews with 11 students from an introductory molecular biology class to elucidate why students prefer a certain subject framing over another and how variable subject framing can impact students' ability to relate to and visualize the question. Our results suggest that the second person is preferred because it is the most straightforward and easy to understand and that many students do not prefer when a scientist's name and date of the study are included in the question potentially due to multiple cognitive and affective factors.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Small changes in how biology assessment questions are worded, such as who is placed in the subject, may greatly impact how students relate to and visualize the subject or subject matter. In this study, we focus on students' preferences for the following subject framings: an authentic scientist, a classmate name, or the second-person "you." Our results suggest that students prefer the second-person framing because it is straightforward and easy to understand.