Viewpoints of Iran Dermatology Board Examination committee members on improving its validity

Board certification in any specialty is associated with a better professional reputation as well as some other advantagessuch as the opportunity of working as an academician. Accuracy of any test in the assessment of its participant performance is of paramount importance. One of the main factors regarding test accuracy is its validity.The aim of this study was to investigate the views of the Iranian Board of Dermatology Examination Committee (IBDEC) Members onimproving its validity. This study was a cross sectional survey. In order to extract the items for development of the instrument for the survey, unstructured individual interviews were conducted with two members of the IBDEC, two faculty members who were not members of the IBDEC, and two resident dermatologists. Afterperforming a content analysis, writing the items, and making revisions in accordance with the expert panel suggestions, the face and content validities of the developed instrument were confirmed by the panel. The instrument was distributed among the members of the IBDEC in September 2013. The collected data were entered into a data set. Fifteen of 16 present members of the IBDEC answered and returned the instrument to the distributer. Ten (%66.7) of participants were male. Mean (standard deviation [SD]) of age and membership duration in IBDEC of the participants were 56.1 (7.8) and 9.6 (6.2) years, respectively. The most difficult and easiest items for being agreed upon were: "Inclusion of key feature problems (KFP) in the written examination may result in better assessment of the resident's clinical decision making" and: "In the board examination, attitudes of the residents towards ethical issues are assessed properly".Cronbach's α was calculated for assessment of the internal consistency of the instrument and was equaled to 0.76. While 53% of the IBDEC members were disagree with that the written board examination can assess resident's different levels of knowledgeproperly, the majority of them were also disagree with the implementation of suggested approved methods for improving the validity of the written board examination. Most of them were also disagree with implementation of evaluation methods for improving oral examination validity.