Normative study of 500 general-knowledge of true-false questions for Russian young adults

Abstract

The main aim of this study was to validate 500 true-false general-knowledge questions in Russian. These norms are valuable to researchers in many fields, as is shown by the impact and relevance of similar norms available in other languages. Although the Russian language is widely spoken, there are no norms available in this language for this type of questions. True-false questions are very useful for measuring semantic memory, among other topics, in neurocognitive studies where there is a trade-off between experimental time and the need for many trials. These types of experimental materials are heavily rooted in cultural background knowledge, making the mere translation from one language to another insufficient. The present research aims to fill this gap. One hundred fifty-five participants answered 500 true-false general knowledge questions split over several consecutive days and three topics: Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, and Culture & Sport. The participants’ task was to indicate whether the statements were true or not, as well as the confidence they had in the correctness of their answer. Despite obtaining questions on each of the topics covering all difficulty levels, grouped analyses showed that Social Science’s accuracy was higher than for Natural Science’s or Culture & Sport questions. In relation to confidence, the grouped perceived difficulty was higher for questions about Culture & Sports when compared with the other two topics. Thus, this study reports and makes available a large pool of Russian true-false general knowledge questions covering different levels of difficulty.