King Saud University Chair for Medical Education Research and Development, Department of Family and Community Medicine, College of Medicine, King Saud University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Adv Health Sci Educ Theory Pract. 2012 Aug;17(3):369-76. doi: 10.1007/s10459-011-9315-2. Epub 2011 Aug 12.
The quality of items written for in-house examinations in medical schools remains a cause of concern. Several faculty development programs are aimed at improving faculty's item writing skills. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a faculty development program in item development. An objective method was developed and used to assess improvement in faculty's competence to develop high quality test items. This was a quasi experimental study with a pretest-midtest-posttest design. A convenience sample of 51 faculty members participated. Structured checklists were used to assess the quality of test items at each phase of the study. Group scores were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance. The results showed a significant increase in participants' mean scores on Multiple Choice Questions, Short Answer Questions and Objective Structured Clinical Examination checklists from pretest to posttest (p < .0005). The effect sizes were 1.38, 3.84 and 2.20 for Multiple Choice Questions, Short Answer Questions and Objective Structured Clinical Examination, respectively. This study emphasizes that items written by faculty without faculty development are generally lacking in quality. It also provides evidence of the value of faculty development in improving the quality of items generated by faculty.
医学院校内考试试题的质量仍然令人担忧。有几个教师发展项目旨在提高教师的试题编写技能。本研究的目的是评估一个教师发展计划在试题开发方面的有效性。开发了一种客观的方法，并用于评估教师提高编写高质量测试题能力的效果。这是一项准实验研究，采用了前测-中测-后测的设计。便利抽样选取了 51 名教师参与。在研究的每个阶段都使用结构化清单来评估试题的质量。使用重复测量方差分析对组得分进行分析。结果显示，参与者在多项选择题、简答题和客观结构化临床考试清单上的平均分从前测到后测都显著提高（p<.0005）。效应大小分别为 1.38、3.84 和 2.20。本研究强调，没有教师发展的教师编写的试题通常质量较差。它还提供了教师发展在提高教师编写试题质量方面的价值的证据。
