Students struggle with the 'not' operator and logical operator precedence when evaluating conditional statements¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · design r3 · q3
Currency · newest study 2026 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · recheck by 2031: baselines and conditions change

Subclaims¶

q3 i? 36.9% of students selected an incorrect option on a conditional-logic item, appearing to apply the 'not' operator as a final step after reading conditions left to right, indicating misunderstanding of operator precedence. → Shile Zhang and Shuhan Zhang 2026

Evidence¶

Shile Zhang and Shuhan Zhang 2026¶

Shile Zhang and Shuhan Zhang. (2026). Integrating AI into computational thinking: development and validation of an assessment tool for higher education students. International Journal of STEM Education. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-026-00623-0

q3 · i? · design · r3

Response-pattern analysis of Item 13 (Conditionals-FKSA1) in the main study, which combined 'not', 'and', and 'or' operators. 36.9% chose Option B, suggesting students misapply operator precedence by evaluating conditions sequentially rather than by precedence rules.

"However, 36.9% of students selected Option B, where they may execute the parentheses first and neglect the function of the "not" condition to make the following parentheses false to print out the provided output."

Discussion¶

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