Comparing times and performances of French- and English-speaking candidates taking a national examination of clinical decision-making skills.

French-speaking candidates taking the translated version of the Medical Council of Canada's (MCC's) Qualifying Examination in Medicine often complain that poor performance could be due to translation defects. The purposes of this 1991 study were to determine (1) whether French-speaking candidates spend the same time as do English-speaking candidates in answering the questions in the fourth and last booklet of Part 1 of the MCC's Qualifying Exam, and (2) for items where the French-speaking candidates have more difficulty, whether these differences are within normal limits, and if not, could they be attributed to faults in the translation? Two versions of the fourth booklet, one in English and the other a translation into French, were administered to 229 randomly selected candidates (98 French speakers and 131 English speakers). The booklets contained 19 clinical problems and a total of 44 key features; performance was measured by the number of key features the examinees correctly responded to. (Key features are the critical or essential steps needed to resolve a clinical problem.) The French text was 16% longer, and the French candidates took longer to complete the two-hour examination (a mean of 116.31 minutes versus 107.84 minutes for the English speakers, p = .000). However, there was no direct relationship between the time spent on a section of the examination and the number of words it contained. The French candidates' overall scores did not differ from those of the English candidates (59.76% versus 61.33%, p = .11).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)