Quality of design and analysis of pre-internship exams for medical students of Hamadan University of Medical Sciences in the years 2018 to 2020

Evaluation is a major step in the educational process that measures learners' abilities and test analysis is a tool to measure its effectiveness. The pre-internship exam is a test by which qualification of medical assessed before entering the internship stage. Therefore, its analysis can indicate its evaluates the competencies of medical students. In this study, the quantitative and qualitative indices of pre-internship exams of medical students of Hamadan University of Medical Sciences were studied.

In this documentary research, all pre-internship questions in September 2018 to 2020, were assessed in terms of taxonomy, structural defects, and difficulty, discrimination indexes. The taxonomy of the questions was evaluated based on Bloom's classification, the structure of the questions based on the Millman checklist, and the index of difficulty and discrimination using the Excel forms available at the university. Data analysis was performed using SPSS 20 software.

In 2018, 56% of the questions and in 2019 and 2020, 64% of the questions were designed at the level of taxonomy 2 and 3. More than 90% of the questions haven't any structural defects. The difficulty index of the questions was on average at the appropriate level, but the discrimination index of the questions was moderate in 2018 and 2020 and weak in 2019.

In attention to the amount of questions with a negative discrimination index, the review of questions, options and the key questions after designing the exam is suggested.