Cognitive diagnostic modelling in healthcare professions education: an eye-opener

Abstract

Criticisms about psychometric paradigms currently used in healthcare professions education include claims of reductionism, objectification, and poor compliance with assumptions. Nevertheless, perhaps the most crucial criticism comes from learners' difficulty in interpreting and making meaningful use of summative scores and the potentially detrimental impact these scores have on learners. The term "post-psychometric era" has become popular, despite persisting calls for the sensible use of modern psychometrics. In recent years, cognitive diagnostic modelling has emerged as a new psychometric paradigm capable of providing meaningful diagnostic feedback. Cognitive diagnostic modelling allows the classification of examinees in multiple cognitive attributes. This measurement is obtained by modelling these attributes as categorical, discrete latent variables. Furthermore, items can reflect more than one latent variable simultaneously. The interactions between latent variables can be modelled with flexibility, allowing a unique perspective on complex cognitive processes. These characteristic features of cognitive diagnostic modelling enable diagnostic classification over a large number of constructs of interest, preventing the necessity of providing numerical scores as feedback to test takers. This paper provides an overview of cognitive diagnostic modelling, including an introduction to its foundations and illustrating potential applications, to help teachers be involved in developing and evaluating assessment tools used in healthcare professions education. Cognitive diagnosis may represent a revolutionary new psychometric paradigm, overcoming the known limitations found in frequently used psychometric approaches, offering the possibility of robust qualitative feedback and better alignment with competency-based curricula and modern programmatic assessment frameworks.

Measurement of uncertainty tolerance revisited

“…30,31 In the context of cross-cultural measurement, EGA can help clinical teachers understand how the items are related to each other and whether they align Finally, a cognitive diagnostic modelling analysis (CDMA) was performed on the classification of TAMSAD scale items on the basis of the sources of uncertainty. CDMA is a statistical modelling technique that focuses on understanding the myriad of cognitive processes involved in the responses of the study participants to each one of the items of the measurement tool, even if these answers involve more than one construct in a single item, 32,33 which overcomes a limitation of older psychometric paradigms. Therefore, this analysis was chosen considering that it may reflect the complexity of the TAMSAD scale.…”

Evaluating a National Traditional Chinese Medicine Examination via Cognitive Diagnostic Approaches

“…Cognitive diagnosis is currently receiving significant interest from researchers and practitioners in health professions education, primarily due to its ability to diagnose individual traits and offer personalized treatment effectively [8]. Cognitive diagnostic assessments [9] are designed to offer diagnostic insights by providing detailed reports on an individual's traits [10].…”

Analysis on the Development Strategy of Computer Education Microcourse Resources Based on a Cognitive Diagnosis Method

“…In the teaching of computer courses, most of the questions are subjective questions. Students' thinking and answers to these questions can exercise their computer thinking and ability [10][11][12]. Therefore, teaching focuses on the process of using what you have learned to solve difficult problems [13].…”