A quantitative methodology for analyzing the impact of the formulation of a mathematical item on students learning assessment

In this paper, we present a methodological approach to the investigation of the impacts of text formulation onstudents’answers in mathematical problem solving-based assessment. After a review of the related literature inMathematics education and a review of the methodologies used until now to investigate this research issue, wedescribe in depth our quantitative approach, providing motivations and examples of its statistical relevance andits potentiality in making interesting phenomena emerge, to be interpreted with further qualitative methods. Weobserved statistically significant evidences of different impacts of the variations on different categories of stu-dents (males/females; students with high and low performances in the whole test). The methodology and ourpreliminary results can inform researchers in mathematics education, teachers and experts in the agencies thatare responsible for large-scale students learning assessment in several contexts (national and international