A collaborative comparison of objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) standard setting methods at Australian medical schools

Bunmi Malau-Aduli, Peta-Ann Teague, Karen D'Souza, Clare Heal, Richard Turner, David Garne, Cees van der Vleuten

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    11 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Background: A key issue underpinning the usefulness of the OSCE assessment to medical education is standard setting, but the majority of standard-setting methods remain challenging for performance assessment because they produce varying passing marks. Several studies have compared standard-setting methods; however, most of these studies are limited by their experimental scope, or use data on examinee performance at a single OSCE station or from a single medical school. This collaborative study between 10 Australian medical schools investigated the effect of standard-setting methods on OSCE cut scores and failure rates. Methods: This research used 5256 examinee scores from seven shared OSCE stations to calculate cut scores and failure rates using two different compromise standard-setting methods, namely the Borderline Regression and Cohen’s methods. Results: The results of this study indicate that Cohen’s method yields similar outcomes to the Borderline Regression method, particularly for large examinee cohort sizes. However, with lower examinee numbers on a station, the Borderline Regression method resulted in higher cut scores and larger difference margins in the failure rates. Conclusion: Cohen’s method yields similar outcomes as the Borderline Regression method and its application for benchmarking purposes and in resource-limited settings is justifiable, particularly with large examinee numbers.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)1261-1267
    Number of pages7
    JournalMedical Teacher
    Volume39
    Issue number12
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2017

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'A collaborative comparison of objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) standard setting methods at Australian medical schools'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this