A Simple Measure to Assess Non-response

There are several tasks where is preferable not responding than responding incorrectly. This idea is not new, but despite several previous attempts there isn’t a commonly accepted measure to assess non-response. We study here an extension of accuracy measure with this feature and a very easy to understand interpretation. The measure proposed (c@1) has a good balance of discrimination power, stability and sensitivity properties. We show also how this measure is able to reward systems that maintain the same number of correct answers and at the same time decrease the number of incorrect ones, by leaving some questions unanswered. This measure is well suited for tasks such as Reading Comprehension tests, where multiple choices per question are given, but only one is correct.