The cognitive level demands of a dental school's predoctoral, didactic examinations

A sample of 563 test items was selected from the entire population of predoctoral, written examinations administered by the University of Pittsburgh School of Dental Medicine during the 1983-1984 academic year. Four independent judges classified the sample test items according to the six major levels of the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (Cognitive Domain) (1956). From the individual classification responses of the four judges, final overall ratings were determined for 518 of the 563 test items. Based upon the final, overall classification ratings for the 518 test items, it was found that 83.9 percent of the items were classified at the Taxonomy's level 1, Knowledge, and 16.1 percent of the test items were classified at the Taxonomy's level 2, Comprehension. No test items were classified at any of the other four levels of the Taxonomy--that is, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation.