Selection for postgraduate training

Selection for an educational programme requires meticulous planning and the adoption of sound educational principles to decide on how and what should be assessed. This article provides a step-wise guide for developing a selection process for postgraduate specialty training, based on the best practice in the literature.

The literature on selecting applicants for educational programmes was reviewed to categorise the selection methods according to their purpose, and their relative strengths and weaknesses. A step-wise guide that encapsulated the best practice for designing a selection process for postgraduate specialty training was then developed.

The steps of developing a selection process for postgraduate specialty training are: determining the competencies required for the training programme; selecting the competencies that can be assessed at selection; identifying content for selection; blueprinting; choice of selection tests; development of test material; piloting; and implementation and evaluation of the selection process. There are robust tests to assess applicants' knowledge at the lower two levels of Miller's pyramid. Scenario-based testing holds promise for assessing at 'shows-how' level. Assessing at 'does' level during selection is difficult, but not impossible.

There is no one test that can be used to select an applicant for a postgraduate training programme. Rather a battery of tests that assesses all the competencies, sampled according to a blueprint, should be used. The eight-step guide proposed in this article provides an educationally sound and defensible procedure to develop a selection process.