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Writing Multiple Choice Questions-Has the Student Become the Master?
Hannah Pham1, Stefan Court-Kowalski1,2, Hong Chan3
1Adelaide Medical School, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia.
Teaching and Learning in Medicine
|May 2, 2022
Summary
Medical students can write multiple-choice questions (MCQs) with good discrimination, but these items often have more flaws than those written by clinicians. Further training in item writing is needed for all authors.
Area of Science:
- Medical Education
- Assessment in Medicine
Background:
- Multiple choice questions (MCQs) are widely used in medical education assessment.
- Creating high-quality MCQs efficiently is a challenge for educators.
- Repeating examination items annually is a common practice.
Purpose of the Study:
- To compare the quality of clinician-authored and student-authored MCQs.
- To evaluate student-authored MCQs as a potential source for faculty item banks.
Main Methods:
- A mock examination was administered to Year IV and V medical students.
- Participants received training on writing and answering MCQs.
- Student-authored and clinician-authored MCQs were analyzed for difficulty, discrimination, item-writing flaws (IWFs), non-functioning distractors (NFDs), and cognitive skill level.
Main Results:
- Student-authored MCQs were written at lower cognitive and difficulty levels.
- Student-authored MCQs had significantly more IWFs and NFDs than clinician-authored MCQs.
- Student-authored MCQs demonstrated equal or better item discrimination compared to clinician-authored MCQs.
Conclusions:
- Student-authored MCQs show comparable discrimination to clinician-authored items but are inferior in other quality aspects.
- Student-authored MCQs could supplement faculty item banks, but barriers to summative use exist.
- Overall MCQ quality requires improvement, emphasizing the need for continuous faculty training in item writing.
Keywords:
Student-authoredcognitive skill levelitem-writing flawsmultiple choice questionnon-functioning distractorMore Related Videos
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