Assessment of Clinical Reasoning in The Evaluation of the Oral Diseases Course in Final-Year Dental Students Using Script Concordance Test (SCT)

Abstract

Background: SCT, considered a valid alternative to the classical evaluation method, is a distinctive method to evaluate medical students’ clinical reasoning skills. The present study aimed to determine the correlation between SCT and clinical-based classical multiple-choice questions (MCQs) in the clinical evaluation of the course of oral disease among Guilan dental students. Methods: In this analytical cross-sectional study, 73 final-year students of the dentistry school of Guilan University who had completed oral and dental diseases courses 1 to 5 were investigated. In this study, in addition to the classical MCQ test at the end of the semester, 15 SCT scenarios with three follow-up questions (45 questions in total) were also administered to the students. The difficulty and discrimination coefficients and the correlation coefficient between the SCT and MCQ tests were measured. Results: The results showed that the mean age of the students was 24.1±59.36, and 53% (39 individuals) were males. Their GPA of the previous semester was 15.42 ± 1.23. Based on the obtained results, a direct and significant relationship was found between the SCT and the MCQ scores (P=0.035); as the SCT scores increased, the MCQ scores increased accordingly. Conclusions: SCT scores were correlated with the results obtained in the classical MCQ test. It is recommended that more research on SCT be used in formative evaluations.