RESEARCH LIBRARY
RESEARCH LIBRARY
View the latest publications from members of the NBME research team
Academic Medicine: Volume 97 - Issue 8 - Pages 1219-1225
Since 2012, the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) has maintained a policy of ≤ 6 attempts on any examination component. The purpose of this study was to empirically examine the appropriateness of existing USMLE retake policy.
Academic Medicine: June 2022
This study examines the associations between Step 3 scores and subsequent receipt of disciplinary action taken by state medical boards for problematic behavior in practice. It analyzes Step 3 total, Step 3 computer-based case simulation (CCS), and Step 3multiple-choice question (MCQ) scores.
Academic Medicine: Volume 96 - Issue 9 - Pages 1324-1331
This study examines associations between USMLE Step 1 and Step 2 Clinical Knowledge (CK) scores and ACGME emergency medicine (EM) milestone ratings.
Academic Medicine: Volume 96 - Issue 9 - Pages 1319-1323
This study examined the relationship between USMLE attempts and the likelihood of receiving disciplinary actions from state medical boards.
Academic Medicine: September 2020 - Volume 95 - Issue 9 - p 1388-1395
This article aims to assess the correlations between United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) performance, American College of Physicians Internal Medicine In-Training Examination (IM-ITE) performance, American Board of Internal Medicine Internal Medicine Certification Exam (IM-CE) performance, and other medical knowledge and demographic variables.
Academic Medicine: March 2019 - Volume 94 - Issue 3 - p 371-377
Schools undergoing curricular reform are reconsidering the optimal timing of Step 1. This study provides a psychometric investigation of the impact on United States Medical Licensing Examination Step 1 scores of changing the timing of Step 1 from after completion of the basic science curricula to after core clerkships.
Academic Medicine: March 2019 - Volume 94 - Issue 3 - p 314-316
The United States Medical Licensing Examination Step 2 Clinical Skills (CS) exam uses physician raters to evaluate patient notes written by examinees. In this Invited Commentary, the authors describe the ways in which the Step 2 CS exam could benefit from adopting a computer-assisted scoring approach that combines physician raters’ judgments with computer-generated scores based on natural language processing (NLP).
Journal of Educational Measurement: Volume 55, Issue 2, Pages 308-327
The widespread move to computerized test delivery has led to the development of new approaches to evaluating how examinees use testing time and to new metrics designed to provide evidence about the extent to which time limits impact performance. Much of the existing research is based on these types of observational metrics; relatively few studies use randomized experiments to evaluate the impact time limits on scores. Of those studies that do report on randomized experiments, none directly compare the experimental results to evidence from observational metrics to evaluate the extent to which these metrics are able to sensitively identify conditions in which time constraints actually impact scores. The present study provides such evidence based on data from a medical licensing examination.
The authors examined the extent to which USMLE scores relate to the odds of receiving a disciplinary action from a U.S. state medical board.
Academic Medicine: Volume 88 - Issue 11 - p 1670-1675
From 2007 through 2012, the NBME team reviewed literature in physician–patient communication, examined performance characteristics of the Step 2 CS exam, observed case development and quality assurance processes, interviewed SPs and their trainers, and reviewed video recordings of examinee–SP interactions. The authors describe perspectives gained by their team from the review process and outline the resulting enhancements to the Step 2 CS exam, some of which were rolled out in June 2012.