Comparison of proficiency in an anesthesiology course across distinct medical student cohorts: Psychometric approaches to test equating

Abstract

Although both the chained linear equating method and Rasch analysis can be readily applied to practical test-equating issues in medical education, Rasch analysis exhibited more versatility in test parameter estimation and item bank development for clinical curriculums.

Comparisons of item difficulty and passing scores by test equating in a basic medical education curriculum

“…One thing notable is that the other items in the five pairs also became harder in subsequent years. These results differed from a previous study that found no significant difference between the other items over two years [12]. It is difficult to present the reason for the increase in the other items’ difficulty in this study.…”

“…Until now, test equating based on IRT has been used in medical education mostly for high-stakes examinations or to equalize two tests given in the same course [6,11,12]. Yim and Huh [6] equated the 2004 Medical Licensing Examination in Korea to the 2003 exam, identified changes of item and ability parameters between the tests, and judged the equity of passing scores between them.…”

“…Yim and Huh [6] equated the 2004 Medical Licensing Examination in Korea to the 2003 exam, identified changes of item and ability parameters between the tests, and judged the equity of passing scores between them. Two other studies performed test equating for two tests given in the same course over 2 years [11,12]. However, to the best of our knowledge, few researchers have attempted to equate all of the tests given in courses that are part of a basic medical education curriculum.…”

Reading Comprehension Tests for Children: Test Equating and Specific Age-Interval Reports

“…We performed a nonsystematic review in PubMed and Science Direct (using the terms, "reading comprehension" and "equating" or "concurrent calibration") and we found only 32 studies. From these, only nine were related to equating reading comprehension tasks with real data (Ree et al, 2003;Betts et al, 2009;von Davier, 2013;Liao et al, 2014;Dimitrov, 2016;Sandefur, 2018;Seo et al, 2018;Wagner et al, 2018;Rodrigues et al, 2020). In general, these studies present a wide diversity of approaches for reporting equating.…”

“…A great part of the research in the educational area used classic or observed scores approaches to equating (Ree et al, 2003;Betts et al, 2009;von Davier, 2013;Wagner et al, 2018). Most part of the studies that used IRT approach used Rasch models, which do not provide information about the discrimination of the items (Liao et al, 2014;Sandefur, 2018;Seo et al, 2018;Rodrigues et al, 2020). The exception is the study of Dimitrov (2016) that used 3PLM.…”