Validating OSCE Performance: The Impact of General Intelligence

Abstract

Purpose: To investigate the relationship between medical students’ eductive ability as measured by the advanced version of the Raven׳s Progressive Matrices (RPM) test, reproductive ability as measured by performance on the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step I, and Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) performance. Method: Thirty-two third-year medical students took the Advanced Progressive Matrices (APM) online, which consists of two parts: (1) a practice set of 12 items, and (2) 36 items which become progressively more difficult as the test proceeds. Several models representing different causal structures are tested and compared. Results: Comparison of the different structural models revealed that eductive reasoning ability better predicted OSCE performance than reproductive ability. Discussion: The relationship between APM and OSCE performance indicates that more in-depth research in domain-general abilities is important.

Keywords

• General intelligence
• Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE)
• Raven׳s Progressive Matrices (RPM)
• Structural Equations Modeling (SEM)
• United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step I