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A collaborative comparison of objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) standard setting methods at Australian medical schools
Background: A key issue underpinning the usefulness of the OSCE assessment to medical education is standard setting, but the majority of standard-setting methods remain challenging for performance assessment because they produce varying passing marks. Several studies have compared standard-setting methods; however, most of these studies are limited by their experimental scope, or use data on examinee performance at a single OSCE station or from a single medical school. This collaborative study between 10 Australian medical schools investigated the effect of standard-setting methods on OSCE cut scores and failure rates.
Methods: This research used 5256 examinee scores from seven shared OSCE stations to calculate cut scores and failure rates using two different compromise standard-setting methods, namely the Borderline Regression and Cohen’s methods.
Results: The results of this study indicate that Cohen’s method yields similar outcomes to the Borderline Regression method, particularly for large examinee cohort sizes. However, with lower examinee numbers on a station, the Borderline Regression method resulted in higher cut scores and larger difference margins in the failure rates.
Conclusion: Cohen’s method yields similar outcomes as the Borderline Regression method and its application for benchmarking purposes and in resource-limited settings is justifiable, particularly with large examinee numbers.
History
Publication title
Medical teacherVolume
39Issue
12Pagination
1261-1267ISSN
0142-159XDepartment/School
Tasmanian School of MedicinePublisher
Carfax PublishingPlace of publication
United KingdomRights statement
Copyright 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis GroupRepository Status
- Restricted