Factors affecting the difficulty of comparison-type word problems in primary mathematics

Abstract

This study investigates factors influencing the difficulty of compare word problems (WPs), a crucial theme for early mathematical development, often linked to quantitative observations. Four factors are examined: the required operation (addition/subtraction vs. multiplication/division), the lexical consistency (match between problem-wording and required operation), the role of the unknown (compared set, comparative relation, or reference set), and order-consistency (the order of numbers in the text is consistent or inconsistent with them in the operation sentence). A written survey containing single-operation WPs was administered to 651 students of grade 3 and grade 4 from Eastern Hungary. The proportion of correct responses measured the item’s difficulty. Results confirmed the strong influence of required operation and lexical consistency in line with prior research. Furthermore, a similar difficulty order based on the unknown type was observed in additive and multiplicative compare problems. However, while influential, order-consistency proved less decisive than the other factors.