Pediatric Examinations Content Validity Comparison: In-House Versus NBME Examination

Objective: Comparison of the content validity of an in-house summative pediatric examination (clinical examination, oral and non-clinical skills assessment) and the American National Board for Medical Examiners Pediatrics Subject Examination (NBME-P) taken by sixth year medical students at the end of their senior pediatric clerkship in our institution. Methods: The content validity of both examinations was compared over five academic years using a modified version of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives: Aknowledge and comprehension, Bapplication and analysis, Csynthesis and evaluation, DAttitude and Eskills. We analyzed which of these educational objectives were evaluated by each assessment tool. Results: Knowledge and comprehension, application and analysis, synthesis and evaluation were adequately evaluated by the clinical, the oral, the non-clinical and the NBME examinations, although not necessarily by the individual components of each assessment. Attitude was adequately tested by the clinical examination only, while psychomotor skills were adequately evaluated only by the clinical and the non-clinical examinations. Conclusions: No single assessment tool adequately evaluated all educational objectives. The results have led us to modify our examination assessment tools of medical students during a clerkship. A diversified range of assessment tools is still needed for that purpose.