Karthikeyan Sowmiya, O'Connor Elizabeth, Hu Wendy
School of Medicine, Western Sydney University, Narellan Road & Gilchrist Drive, Campbelltown, NSW, 2560, Australia.
BMC Med Educ. 2020 Sep 29;20(1):334. doi: 10.1186/s12909-020-02229-8.
The challenge of generating sufficient quality items for medical student examinations is a common experience for medical program coordinators. Faculty development strategies are commonly used, but there is little research on the factors influencing medical educators to engage in item writing. To assist with designing evidence-based strategies to improve engagement, we conducted an interview study informed by self-determination theory (SDT) to understand educators' motivations to write items.
We conducted 11 semi-structured interviews with educators in an established medical program. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and underwent open coding and thematic analysis.
Major themes included; responsibility for item writing and item writer motivations, barriers and enablers; perceptions of the level of content expertise required to write items; and differences in the writing process between clinicians and non-clinicians.
Our findings suggest that flexible item writing training, strengthening of peer review processes and institutional improvements such as improved communication of expectations, allocation of time for item writing and pairing new writers with experienced writers for mentorship could enhance writer engagement.
为医学生考试生成足够高质量的试题，这一挑战是医学项目协调员的共同经历。教师发展策略被普遍采用，但关于影响医学教育工作者参与试题编写的因素的研究却很少。为了协助设计基于证据的策略以提高参与度，我们基于自我决定理论（SDT）进行了一项访谈研究，以了解教育工作者编写试题的动机。
我们对一个成熟医学项目中的教育工作者进行了11次半结构化访谈。访谈内容逐字记录，并进行了开放式编码和主题分析。
主要主题包括：试题编写的责任和试题编写者的动机、障碍和促进因素；对编写试题所需内容专业水平的认知；以及临床医生和非临床医生在编写过程中的差异。
我们的研究结果表明，灵活的试题编写培训、加强同行评审流程以及机构改进，如更好地传达期望、分配试题编写时间以及将新编写者与经验丰富的编写者配对以提供指导，都可以提高编写者的参与度。
