Abstract for:Comparing online with paper pencil testing mode when solving stock flow problems using different problem solving strategies

Classic data collection requires participants to come into a laboratory and solve the tasks given on site in a paper pencil format. In past years, it became more popular to implement tests via internet. However, it seems not always clear whether results from both methods can be compared that easily. For some fields of research, comparative studies can be found. As of the author’s knowledge, no such comparison has been explicitly done for stock flow tasks yet. Therefore, this study gave five stock flow tasks to two independent samples of participants either in a classic paper pencil setting at university or via internet. The tasks administered included four tasks where participants were asked to draw the development of the stock and one where they had to answer questions concerning its development. For each setting, about half of the participants were prompted to solve the tasks either with a conventional (CPS) or general (GPS) problem solving strategy. Overall, the online sample yielded somewhat better results as did the GPS strategy for the four drawing tasks. Solution rates for the question based task were lower in general and did not produce a clear outcome towards setting or problem solving strategy.