The foundations of measurement and assessment in medical education

Abstract

As a medical educator, you may be directly or indirectly involved in the quality of assessments. Measurement has a substantial role in developing the quality of assessment questions and student learning. The information provided by psychometric data can improve pedagogical issues in medical education. Through measurement we are able to assess the learning experiences of students. Standard setting plays an important role in assessing the performance quality of students as doctors in the future. Presentation of performance data for standard setters may contribute towards developing a credible and defensible pass mark. Validity and reliability of test scores are the most important factors for developing quality assessment questions. Analysis of the answers to individual questions provides useful feedback for assessment leads to improve the quality of each question, and hence make students’ marks fair in terms of diversity and ethnicity. Item Characteristic Curves (ICC) can send signals to assessment leads to improve the quality of individual questions.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.

Notes on contributors

Mohsen Tavakol, PhD, MClinEd, is assistant professor of psychometrics in the Medical School at the University of Nottingham. His main interests are in medical education assessment, psychometric analysis (Classical Test Theory, Generalisability theory, Item Response Theories Models, standard setting, roust statistical methods, multivariate statistics, multilevel modelling, quantitative and qualitative research methods.

Reg Dennick, PhD, MEd, FHEA, is a professor of medical education in the University of Nottingham. His main interests are in medical education teaching and research, problem-based learning, assessment, clinical reasoning, staff training and curriculum development.