Confidence weighting

Confidence weighting (CW) is concerned with measuring two variables: (1) what a respondent believes is a correct answer to a question and (2) what degree of certainty the respondent has toward the correctness of this belief.

Confidence weighting when applied to a specific answer selection for a particular test or exam question is referred to in the literature from cognitive psychology as item-specific confidence, a term typically used by researchers who investigate metamemory or metacognition, comprehension monitoring, or feeling-of-knowing. Item-specific confidence is defined as calibrating the relationship between an objective performance of accuracy (e.g., a test answer selection) with the subjective measure of confidence, (e.g., a numeric value assigned to the selection). Studies on self-confidence and metacognition during test taking (e.g.,) have used item-specific confidence as a way to assess the accuracy and confidence underlying knowledge judgments.