RESEARCH LIBRARY

CJASN May 2018, 13 (5) 710-717

Medical specialty and subspecialty fellowship programs administer subject-specific in-training examinations to provide feedback about level of medical knowledge to fellows preparing for subsequent board certification. This study evaluated the association between the American Society of Nephrology In-Training Examination and the American Board of Internal Medicine Nephrology Certification Examination in terms of scores and passing status.

Applied Psychological Measurement: Volume: 42 issue: 8, page(s): 595-612

Conventional methods for evaluating the utility of subscores rely on reliability and correlation coefficients. However, correlations can overlook a notable source of variability: variation in subtest means/difficulties. Brennan introduced a reliability index for score profiles based on multivariate generalizability theory, designated as G, which is sensitive to variation in subtest difficulty. However, there has been little, if any, research evaluating the properties of this index. A series of simulation experiments, as well as analyses of real data, were conducted to investigate G under various conditions of subtest reliability, subtest correlations, and variability in subtest means.

Journal of Veterinary Medical Education 2018 45:3, 381-387

This study uses item response data from the November–December 2014 and April 2015 NAVLE administrations (n =5,292), to conduct timing analyses comparing performance across several examinee subgroups. The results provide evidence that conditions were sufficient for most examinees, thereby supporting the current time limits. For the relatively few examinees who may have been impacted, results suggest the cause is not a bias with the test but rather the effect of poor pacing behavior combined with knowledge deficits.

Western Journal of Emergency Medicine: Integrating Emergency Care with Population Health, 19(1)

This review is a descriptive summary of the development of National EM M4 examinations, Version 1 (V1) and Version 2 (V2), and the NBME EM Advanced Clinical Examination (ACE) and their relevant usage and performance data. In particular, it describes how examination content was edited to affect desired changes in examination performance data and offers a model for educators seeking to develop their own examinations.

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.

Qual Life Res 27, 1711–1720 (2018)

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as part of its regulatory mission, is charged with determining whether a clinical outcome assessment (COA) is “fit for purpose” when used in clinical trials to support drug approval and product labeling. This paper provides a review (and some commentary) on the current state of affairs in COA development/evaluation/use with a focus on one aspect: How do you know you are measuring the right thing? In the psychometric literature, this concept is referred to broadly as validity and has itself evolved over many years of research and application.

Medical Care: April 2017 - Volume 55 - Issue 4 - p 436-441

The objective of this study is to identify modifiable factors that improve the reliability of ratings of severity of health care–associated harm in clinical practice improvement and research.