PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - O'Neill, Thomas R.
AU  - Peabody, Michael R.
TI  - Impact of One Versus Two Content-Specific Modules on American Board of Family Medicine Certification Examination Scores
AID  - 10.3122/jabfm.2017.01.160171
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - The Journal of the American Board of Family
                Medicine
PG  - 85--90
VI  - 30
IP  - 1
4099  - http://www.jabfm.org/content/30/1/85.short
4100  - http://www.jabfm.org/content/30/1/85.full
SO  - J Am Board Fam Med2017 Jan 01; 30
AB  - Background: 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.Methods: 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.Results: 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.Conclusion: 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.