RESEARCH LIBRARY
RESEARCH LIBRARY
View the latest publications from members of the NBME research team
Applied Measurement Education: Volume 36, Issue 4, Pages 326-339
This study examines strategies for detecting parameter drift in small-sample equating, crucial for maintaining score comparability in high-stakes exams. Results suggest that methods like mINFIT, mOUTFIT, and Robust-z effectively mitigate drifting anchor items' effects, while caution is advised with the Logit Difference approach. Recommendations are provided for practitioners to manage item parameter drift in small-sample settings.
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
Proceedings of the 18th Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational Applications (BEA 2023), Pages 443-447
This paper presents the ACTA system, which performs automated short-answer grading in the domain of high-stakes medical exams. The system builds upon previous work on neural similarity-based grading approaches by applying these to the medical domain and utilizing contrastive learning as a means to optimize the similarity metric.
Advancing Natural Language Processing in Educational Assessment
This book examines the use of natural language technology in educational testing, measurement, and assessment. Recent developments in natural language processing (NLP) have enabled large-scale educational applications, though scholars and professionals may lack a shared understanding of the strengths and limitations of NLP in assessment as well as the challenges that testing organizations face in implementation. This first-of-its-kind book provides evidence-based practices for the use of NLP-based approaches to automated text and speech scoring, language proficiency assessment, technology-assisted item generation, gamification, learner feedback, and beyond.
Applied Psychological Measurement: Volume 46, issue 2, page(s) 571-588
This study evaluates the degree to which position effects on two separate low-stakes tests administered to two different samples were moderated by different item (item length, number of response options, mental taxation, and graphic) and examinee (effort, change in effort, and gender) variables. Items exhibited significant negative linear position effects on both tests, with the magnitude of the position effects varying from item to item.
Applied Psychological Measurement: Volume 46, issue 6, page(s) 529-547
The current simulation study demonstrated that the sampling variance associated with the item response theory (IRT) item parameter estimates can help detect outliers in the common items under the 2-PL and 3-PL IRT models. The results showed the proposed sampling variance statistic (SV) outperformed the traditional displacement method with cutoff values of 0.3 and 0.5 along a variety of evaluation criteria.
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 97 - Issue 4 - Pages 476-477
Response to to emphasize that although findings support a relationship between multiple USMLE attempts and increased likelihood of receiving disciplinary actions, the findings in isolation are not sufficient for proposing new policy on how many attempts should be allowed.
Educational Measurement: Issues and Practices: Volume 41 - Issue 1 - Pages 95-96
Often unanticipated situations arise that can create a range of problems from threats to score validity, to unexpected financial costs, and even longer-term reputational damage. This module discusses some of these unusual challenges that usually occur in a credentialing program.
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.