Process Modeling: A Structured Approach to Assessing Complex Decision Making

• In Event: Expertise and Complex Decision Making

Abstract

In an effort to better align item development to goals of assessing higher-order tasks and decision making as well as to principled assessment frameworks like Evidence Centered Design and Assessment Engineering, complex decision trees were developed to follow clinical reasoning scripts and used as models on which multiple-choice questions could be built. Development of one such model within the field of Internal Medicine and an item based on the model are demonstrated, walking through the item development process step-by-step. The result is an approach applicable to any assessment involving complex decision-making and could be used to inform the entire test development process from construct development to automated item generation.

Authors

• Robert J. Cook, American Board of Internal Medicine

• Steven J. Durning, The Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences