The Journal of Medical Education and Development

Introduction and the goal : Exam with Multiple-choice question is one of the most objective tests applied in medical science. This type of exam is considered as one of the best existing methods of testing because of several reasons such as homogeneity of the questions, low susceptibility for blind guess, and easiness of the scoring. The goal of this study is to find out the extent which the members of scientific board and the professors of Yazd Medical University of Shahid Sadoughi follow the multiple-choice test-making rules while preparing the questions for final exams.

Methods : This is a descriptive study one which was administered on the questions of 187 of the members of scientific board and the university professors who had evaluated their students by multiple-choice questions. The data was gathered using the check list designed by the members of medical education center including demographic information of the scientific board member and the items on how to adapt multiple-choice questions to making rules of these questions. Finally the gathered data was analyzed by SPSS software.

Results : The results showed that 79.1% (148 persons) of the 187 subjects were males and the rest were females. The highest number of the subjects was from Medical University (clinical) (41.2% or 77 persons) and the lowest was from public health (8% or 15 persons). The distribution of the scores by ordinal scale included 24.6(46 persons) as good, 66.8% (125 persons) as intermediate and 8.6 (16 persons) as poor. The highest percentage of good scores belonged to nursery and midwifery faculty (30.4%) and the lowest belonged to paramedical faculty (5.6%). Besides paramedical faculty (83.3%) possessed the highest intermediate score (83.3%) and the faculty of dentistry possessed the lowest one. Finally, the highest low score belonged to dentistry faculty (16%) and the lowest was for Medical faculty (5.2%)(clinical).

Discussion : Due to the significant role of evaluation in the process of teaching, fortifying and stabilizing what the students have learnt in final exams, preparing standard questions under test making rules is something inevitable. Therefore, instruction of the scientific board members is an essential issue in order to achieve this goal. And it is recommended that education development centers do their best to investigate the multiple-choice questions and offer the required feed-back to them.