Francis O’Donnell, PhD
Senior Psychometrician
Francis O’Donnell is a psychometrician at NBME. She is involved in psychometric activities and research for medical education assessment programs, including Customized Assessment Services, Subject Examinations and Self-Assessments. She also oversees scoring and quality assurance for a selection of certification programs and occasionally facilitates workshops for medical schools on topics such as item analysis and best practices in score reporting.
Francis is passionate about how assessment can support learning throughout medical students’ education trajectory. She has led or supported several initiatives related to communicating assessment results in ways that are clearer and more action oriented, and she recently contributed to the score report redesign and introduction of improved feedback for the Comprehensive Basic Science Examination and Comprehensive Basic Science Self-Assessment.
As technology advances, she looks forward to possibilities related to interactive, customizable dashboards. She is also interested in fairness and validity, including understanding the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on assessment performance, monitoring exam security and promoting fair outcomes through every step of the assessment cycle, from test development to reporting results.
Francis received her doctorate in research, educational measurement, and psychometrics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Prior to joining NBME in 2020, she worked as a research fellow at the UMass Center for Educational Assessment, taught graduate courses in research methods and statistics, and provided assessment support to the adult education branch of the Massachusetts Department of Education.
