Assessor Personality Traits Are Not Educationally Important Drivers of Assessor Stringency/Leniency

Assessor stringency/leniency (ASL), the tendency for an assessor to consistently provide low or high scores, has been shown to have educationally important effects on learner assessment scores in multiple settings. To date, there is no clear understanding of the underlying drivers of ASL in the context of medical education. Some authors have hypothesized a link between personality traits and ASL, but there is currently insufficient data to reach any conclusions. This study seeks to determine whether there is a significant association between physician assessors' personality traits and ASL.

This prospective cohort study was conducted at an academic emergency department in Ottawa, Canada. Participating assessors volunteered to complete the IPIP-Neo 120, a personality questionnaire based on the five-factor model. All end-of-shift assessments completed between July 1, 2021, and June 30, 2022, were collected, and ASL was quantified for each assessor using the mean delta method. Linear regression was used to assess the correlation between personality scores and ASL.

A total of 2127 assessments, representing 184 learners, were analyzed. Twenty-five assessors were enrolled, with a wide distribution of assessor personality scores for each trait. While there was a trend toward leniency with increasing assessor extraversion, this did not reach statistical significance (p = 0.07, R ² = 0.13). There was no significant link between other personality traits and ASL.

Integrating our findings with the existing literature, we conclude that personality traits are likely not educationally important drivers of ASL in medicine. Future research should examine other possible contributors to ASL in medical education.