J Educ Eval Health Prof.  2020;17(1):28. 10.3352/jeehp.2020.17.28.

Similarity of the cut score in test sets with different item amounts using the modified Angoff, modified Ebel, and Hofstee standard-setting methods for the Korean Medical Licensing Examination

• Park J
• Yim MK
• Kim NJ
• Ahn DS
• Kim YM

• KMID: 2511693
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.3352/jeehp.2020.17.28

Abstract

Purpose
The Korea Medical Licensing Exam (KMLE) typically contains a large number of items. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether there is a difference in the cut score between evaluating all items of the exam and evaluating only some items when conducting standard-setting.
Methods
We divided the item sets that appeared on 3 recent KMLEs for the past 3 years into 4 subsets of each year of 25% each based on their item content categories, discrimination index, and difficulty index. The entire panel of 15 members assessed all the items (360 items, 100%) of the year 2017. In split-half set 1, each item set contained 184 (51%) items of year 2018 and each set from split-half set 2 contained 182 (51%) items of the year 2019 using the same method. We used the modified Angoff, modified Ebel, and Hofstee methods in the standard-setting process.
Results
Less than a 1% cut score difference was observed when the same method was used to stratify item subsets containing 25%, 51%, or 100% of the entire set. When rating fewer items, higher rater reliability was observed.
Conclusion
When the entire item set was divided into equivalent subsets, assessing the exam using a portion of the item set (90 out of 360 items) yielded similar cut scores to those derived using the entire item set. There was a higher correlation between panelists’ individual assessments and the overall assessments.

Keyword

Medical licensing examination; Standard setting; Modified Angoff; Ebel; Hofstee