To the Editor: We appreciate Dr. Walsh's commentary and strongly agree that it is important to publish the actual questions used when survey-based research is published. While we respect his opinion that the questions could have been written differently, great care was taken when drafting these questions so that the content and context could be understood by practicing clinicians. The questions were tested among several family physicians and were edited based on feedback gained from this process.
While we also appreciate that Dr. Walsh cites the excellent National Board of Medical Examiners guidance for constructing written test questions, a book we consult often when crafting test questions for our medical students, we offer as a caution the introductory guidance to this book from its authors: “…this manual will be useful primarily by faculty who are teaching medical students in basic science and clinical clerkships.” This study's questions were crafted for an entirely different audience and we therefore chose to use a different approach.
Respectfully,