Defining and tracking medical student self-monitoring using multiple-choice question item certainty
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Open Access
Defining and tracking medical student selfmonitoring using multiple-choice question item certainty Mike Tweed1* , Gordon Purdie1 and Tim Wilkinson2
Abstract Background: Self-monitoring is an important component of clinical practice. It is underpinned by the framework of self-efficacy which is concerned with judgments of how well one believes one can achieve or perform a task. This research aimed to develop criteria for adequate self-monitoring, then to measure patterns of self-monitoring, and to explore how these patterns relate to a student’s year in a medical course and to patterns of knowledge. Methods: Analysis of individuals’ levels of correctness in answering assessment items and their certainty in correctness may be used to inform assessments of ability to self-monitor. Two criteria were proposed and applied to define adequate self-monitoring. Firstly, increasing proportions correct with increasing levels of certainty. Secondly, having a proportion correct for high certainty responses that was not lower than cohort levels. Student responses in progress tests comprising multiple-choice questions (MCQs) and associated certainty were analysed. Criteria for the presence of adequate self-monitoring and for adequate knowledge were applied to the results of each of four tests conducted over 2 years, and used to categorise patterns of self-monitoring and knowledge. Results: Data from 3 year group cohorts totalling 737 students were analysed. The majority (58%) of students demonstrated adequate knowledge and met both criteria for adequate self-monitoring across all four tests. The most advanced year group cohort had the highest rates of adequate knowledge and the highest rates of meeting both self-monitoring criteria. The patterns of self-monitoring were the same as the patterns of knowledge across the four tests for 454 students, but for the remaining 283 the patterns of self-monitoring and knowledge differed. Conclusion: Analysis of responses to item level certainty has informed development of a definition of adequate self-monitoring that may be applied to individual student’s responses from a single test, and to track the adequacy of a student’s self-monitoring over time. Patterns of self-monitoring tend to match patterns of knowledge, but not in all cases, suggesting the self-monitoring measure could provide additional information about student ability. Keywords: Self-monitoring, Certainty, MCQ assessment
* Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Department of Medicine, University of Otago Wellington, PO Box 7343, Wellington 6242, New Zealand Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes wer
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