Impact of One Versus Two Content-Specific Modules on American Board of Family Medicine Certification Examination Scores.

Abstract

We consider the question of whether requiring diplomates to select only 1 content-specific module, rather than 2, would increase, decrease, or produce no change in scores among the examinee population. Examinees' scores were computed under 3 different conditions: the examination core plus (1) both modules, (2) the module on which they scored higher, and (3) the module on which they scored lower. Although the differences in scores across the 3 conditions were relatively small, asking examinees to select only a single module would likely benefit more examinees than it would harm by a 4:1 ratio, assuming that the diplomates selected the module on which they scored higher. Only 114 of the 29,088 examinees (0.4%) would have changed from a pass to a fail, whereas 467 (1.6%) would have changed from fail to pass. These results suggest that having examinees select 1 module rather than 2 will likely produce a slight score increase for examinees. Simultaneously, it would improve the standardization of the examination across examinees.