Designing and Implementing a Competency-Based Formative Progress Assessment System at a Canadian Dental School.

Progress testing is an innovative formative assessment practice that has been found successful in many educational programs. In progress testing, one exam is given to students at regular intervals as they progress through a curriculum, allowing them to benchmark their increase in knowledge over time. The aim of this study was to assess the first two years of results of a progress testing system implemented in a Canadian dental school.

Creating a test blueprint for a progress testing program: A paired-comparisons approach.

Context: Creating a new testing program requires the development of a test blueprint that will determine how the items on each test form are distributed across possible content areas and practice domains. To achieve validity, categories of a blueprint are typically based on the judgments of content experts. How experts judgments are elicited and combined is important to the quality of resulting test blueprints.

The COMPASS study: a longitudinal hierarchical research platform for evaluating natural experiments related to changes in school-level programs, policies and built environment resources.

Background: Few researchers have the data required to adequately understand how the school environment impacts youth health behaviour development over time.

Methods/design: COMPASS is a prospective cohort study designed to annually collect hierarchical longitudinal data from a sample of 90 secondary schools and the 50,000+ grade 9 to 12 students attending those schools. COMPASS uses a rigorous quasi-experimental design to evaluate how changes in school programs, policies, and/or built environment (BE) characteristics are related to changes in multiple youth health behaviours and outcomes over time.

Admission criteria and student success in a medical radiation sciences program.

Determining admission criteria that will predict successful student outcomes is a challenging undertaking for newly established health professional programs. This study examined data from the students who entered a medical radiation sciences program in September 2002. By analyzing the correlation between undergraduate GPA, grades in undergraduate science courses, performance in program coursework, and post-graduation certification examination results, the authors determined admission criteria that were linked to successful student outcomes for radiological technology and radiation therapy students.

An evaluation of local item dependencies in the Medical Council of Canada Qualifying Examination Part I.

Purpose: This study investigates (a) whether items within the Multiple-Choice Questions component of the Medical Council of Canada's Qualifying Examination Part I exhibit local dependencies and (b) potential sources of such dependencies.

Method: The dimensionality of each of six discipline-based subtests was assessed based on exploratory nonlinear factor analyses. A standardized Fisher's z statistic was used to test residual item correlations for local item dependencies.

Differential weighting of errors on a test of clinical reasoning skills.

Problem Statement And Background: Examinees can make three types of errors on the short-menu questions in the Clinical Reasoning Skills component of the Medical Council of Canada's Qualifying Examination Part I: (1) failing to select any correct responses, (2) selecting too many responses, or (3) selecting a response that is inappropriate or harmful to the patient. This study compared the information provided by equal and differential weighting of these errors.

Method: The item response theory nominal model was applied to fit examinees' response patterns on the 1998 test.

Assessment training in clinical psychology doctoral programs: what should we teach? What do we teach?

All clinical psychology doctoral programs accredited by the American Psychological Association provide training in psychological assessment. However, what the programs teach and how they teach it vary widely. So, also, do beliefs about what should be taught.