Majallah-i Dānishgāh-i ̒Ulūm-i Pizishkī-i Bābul (Dec 2003)
Quality of final examination in students of Babol Medical University, 1999-2000
Abstract
Background and Objective: Planning of the exams with good quality in educational schedule of university lessons is important. Because the results of examination not only used for judgment about learners function but also is useful to survey effective education, methods and education materials. With regard to great using of MCQ in university centers, it was decided to study the quality of final exam. Methods: In this descriptive and analytical study about 1485 MCQ related to 40 subjects of examination from basic and specific lessons of nursing students in second semester of the year 1999-2000 was surveyed. Findings: The mean difficulty index was 0.7 in over half of questions in all examinations that belonged to easy and very easy category and 11.4% of total questions in level of α=0.05 had meaningful discriminative index. Only 5.9% of tests were really acted as four choice questions but others were as one or two choices. 76.2% exams of the study had negative reliability coefficient and only 23.8% of them had positive reliability coefficient that their amount had been variable from +0.03 to maximum +0.5 for one examination. Conclusion: According to the results, designing final exams was not suitable and exams that used to evaluate the students education outcome had essential and structural errors. This exam does not act as a practical and reliable tool and can not measure actual difference among students.
