Assessing Medical Students' Longitudinal History-Gathering Skills in Objective Structured Clinical Examination and Its Reliability: A Testlet Response Model Approach

• In Event: Assessment and Feedback in Health Professions Education

Abstract

This study has three purposes: 1) assessing medical students’ history-gathering skills (HG) using a testlet response model (TRM) under a latent variable framework, 2) constructing a longitudinal TRM for the repeatedly-measured HG, and 3) examining the reliability of HG in a longitudinal setting. This study provides an alternative approach to incorporate case scenarios into the model and expands the model to a longitudinal setting. It is expected that this application will provide guidance for medical schools to assess the quality of their developed items, skills, and cases. Furthermore, if multiple medical institutions choose to collaborate and share their cases or items, this framework and robust method will also help facilitate test construction and item pool design.

Authors

• Chi Chang, Michigan State University

• Heather Laird-Fick, Michigan State University

• Carol Parker, Michigan State University