PEDIATRICS Vol. 9 No. 3 March 1952, pp. 382-384
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow P3Rs: Submit a response
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me when P3Rs are posted
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow E-mail this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My File Cabinet
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow reprints & permissions
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via CrossRef
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Google Scholar
Right arrow Search for Related Content

SPECIAL ARTICLE

AMERICAN BOARD OF PEDIATRICS

THE EXAMINATIONS COMMITTEE

STATISTICAL analysis of the January 1951 written examination of the American Board of Pediatrics has been completed. The following comments are offered for general information.

Like the examination of January 1950 (see Pediatrics 8:598, 1951), this examination also consisted of 200 false and true statements. It was a completely new examination, that is, none of the statements contained in it had appeared in previous examinations. Tabulation of the responses of all the candidates to each of the 200 items disclosed the fact that some of the statements had been poorly phrased, that some of them dealt with details of disease with which the vast majority of candidates were unfamiliar, that some few were answered correctly by 99% of the candidates. Such statements do not contribute to the accuracy of grading. They are, however, unavoidable before new statements have been tested on the candidates. The committee charged with preparing the examination is aware of this weakness and will continue to assemble statistics and comments toward the objective of reducing the number of poor questions to a minimum.

The examination was taken by 366 candidates. The method of grading was the same as has been used in the past, that is, to the number of correctly answered statements is added half the number of unanswered statements and from the total 100 is subtracted; the remainder is the grade. The distribution of these grades is shown graphically in the histogram (see chart 1). Superimposed on the histogram is a normal frequency curve the ordinates of which were computed from the mean and standard deviation of all the grades.[See chart 1 in Source Pdf]