Guidance for high-stakes testing within pharmacy educational assessment

The term "high-stakes testing" is widely used among pharmacy educators, but the term often seems misused or used incompletely. This Teachable Moments Matter (TMM) focuses on the importance of scientific-rigor when assessing learners' abilities. This article discusses high-stakes testing - what it is and what it is not. This TMM is not meant as an extensive review of the topic.

As imperative for ethically-fair high-stakes testing, we will focus on defining and explaining high-stake testing, to include: evidence for validation, development of cut-scores, magnitudes of reliability coefficients, and other reliability measurement tools such as Generalizability Theory and Item-Response Theory.

From our perspectives as educational psychometricians, we hope that this discussion will help foster scientifically-rigorous use and reporting of high-stakes testing in pharmacy education and research.