University of Tasmania
Browse

File(s) under permanent embargo

A collaborative comparison of objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) standard setting methods at Australian medical schools

journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-19, 16:11 authored by Malau-Aduli, BS, Teague, P-A, D'Souza, K, Heal, C, Richard TurnerRichard Turner, Garne, DL, van der Vleuten, C

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 teacher

Volume

39

Issue

12

Pagination

1261-1267

ISSN

0142-159X

Department/School

Tasmanian School of Medicine

Publisher

Carfax Publishing

Place of publication

United Kingdom

Rights statement

Copyright 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Repository Status

  • Restricted

Socio-economic Objectives

Expanding knowledge in the health sciences

Usage metrics

    University Of Tasmania

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC