The Use of Rasch and Item Mapping in Determining Cut Score of Comprehensive Pre internship Exam

One of the most controversial issues in educational measurement is to determine the cut score during the development and administration of a test. This paper aimed at using the Rasch model (item mapping) in determining cut score of the comprehensive pre internship exam in medical education.

This is a descriptive cross-sectional study. in doing so 13 faculty members of Tehran University of Medical Sciences were selected as the panelists Data collection instrument was the 200-item pre intership exam which administered in the Region 10 of the national medical science system between August 22 and September 21, 2016, that  were responded by 274 students of university of medical sciences A cut score was set to identify pass/fail score for performance assessment. Data were analyzed by Winstep.

According to the findings, the item reliability of this exam was 0.98 (PR=0.98) and person reliability of 0.93 (IP=0.93), that indicate the sample variance and test length were suitable and the items were selected from the nine regions proportionally. Examining items by panelists using the item map method showed three judgment stages included the item difficulty of (-0.46), raw score of 103, and ability parameter equivalent of (0.58).

Procedural validity of the cut score showed that the use of item map method resulted in greater agreement between the panelists on this score. Results indicated high satisfaction of the panelists because of feasibility of this process and implementation stage.