TITLE:
Validity Evidence for Assessments on a UK Graduate Entry Medical Course
AUTHORS:
Celia A. Taylor, Remi Zvauya
KEYWORDS:
Graduate Entry Medicine; Assessment; Validity
JOURNAL NAME:
Creative Education,
Vol.4 No.6A,
June
13,
2013
ABSTRACT: Graduate entry
medical courses (GEC) have been introduced into the UK to increase
the supply of doctors and to widen participation. In addition to evaluation
against these outcomes, the educational process should also be evaluated. One
aspect of process is assessment and different types of validity evidence for
the assessments used should be provided. This paper provides validity evidence
for the assessments on a UK GEC, focusing on the 2010/11 assessment diet. The
types of validity evidence provided are content, internal structure,
relationship with other variables and consequences. Students’ GEC
assessment results are used to determine whether or not students should
progress to Year 3 on the traditional course. 66% of the learning outcome/body
system combinations in the assessment specification for Years 1 & 2 of the
traditional course were assessed in one assessment diet. Short answer questions
performed “best” in terms of
difficulty and discrimination. The reliability of three modules was just
outside the recommended range of 0.7 to 0.9. GEC performance is at least as
good a predictor of final year performance as Year 1/2 performance on the
traditional course. Across the six written modules for 2010/11, 12 scores (5%)
were in the borderline range. Judgement regarding the
validity of interpretations made from GEC assessment results is left to the
reader since such judgements should not be made by those providing the validity
evidence. Similar studies should aim to use benchmarks to enable results to be
more objectively evaluated.