RESEARCH LIBRARY

Advances in Health Sciences Education

Recent advancements enable replacing MCQs with SAQs in high-stakes assessments, but prior research often used small samples under low stakes and lacked time data. This study assesses difficulty, discrimination, and time in a large-scale high-stakes context

Journal of Educational Measurement: Volume 58, Issue 4, Pages 515-537

In this paper, the NBME team reports the results an eye-tracking study designed to evaluate how the presence of the options in multiple-choice questions impacts the way medical students responded to questions designed to evaluate clinical reasoning. Examples of the types of data that can be extracted are presented. We then discuss the implications of these results for evaluating the validity of inferences made based on the type of items used in this study.

Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice

This short, invited manuscript focuses on the implications for certification and licensure assessment organizations as a result of the wide‐spread disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 39: 37-44

This article presents the results of an experiment in which content experts were randomly assigned to one of two response probability conditions: .67 and .80. If the standard-setting judgments collected with the bookmark procedure are internally consistent, both conditions should produce highly similar cut scores.

Journal of Educational Measurement: Volume 55, Issue 4, Pages 564-581

Smoothing techniques are designed to improve the accuracy of equating functions. The main purpose of this study is to compare seven model selection strategies for choosing the smoothing parameter (C) for polynomial loglinear presmoothing and one procedure for model selection in cubic spline postsmoothing for mixed‐format pseudo tests under the random groups design.

Adv in Health Sci Educ 24, 141–150 (2019)

Research suggests that the three-option format is optimal for multiple choice questions (MCQs). This conclusion is supported by numerous studies showing that most distractors (i.e., incorrect answers) are selected by so few examinees that they are essentially nonfunctional. However, nearly all studies have defined a distractor as nonfunctional if it is selected by fewer than 5% of examinees.

Medical Teacher: Volume 40 - Issue 8 - p 838-841

Adaptive learning requires frequent and valid assessments for learners to track progress against their goals. This study determined if multiple-choice questions (MCQs) “crowdsourced” from medical learners could meet the standards of many large-scale testing programs.

Journal of Graduate Medical Education: June 2018, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 337-338

To create examinations with scores that accurately support their intended interpretation and use in a particular setting, examination writers must clearly define what the test is intended to measure (the construct). Writers must also pay careful attention to how content is sampled, how questions are constructed, and how questions perform in their unique testing contexts.1–3 This Rip Out provides guidance for test developers to ensure that scores from MCQ examinations fit their intended purpose.