The Australian Medical Schools Assessment Collaboration: benchmarking the preclinical performance of medical students.

Objectives: To report the level of participation of medical schools in the Australian Medical Schools Assessment Collaboration (AMSAC); and to measure differences in student performance related to medical school characteristics and implementation methods.

Design: Retrospective analysis of data using the Rasch statistical model to correct for missing data and variability in item difficulty. Linear model analysis of variance was used to assess differences in student performance.