A Comparison Between Written Assessment Methods: Multiple-choice and Short Answer Questions in End-of-clerkship Examinations for Final Year Medical Students

Introduction An important aspect of a modern academic curriculum is assessment, which can be clinical and written. Written assessment includes both multiple-choice questions (MCQs) and short answer questions (SAQs). Debate continues as to which is more reliable. It is important to assess the correlation between the two different formats of written assessments, especially in the clinical subjects as they are different from the basic science subjects. Moreover, data are lacking in the correlation of the two formats of the written assessment in the clinical subjects. Therefore, we conducted this study to see the correlation between MCQs and SAQs in the end-of-clerkship examinations for final-year medical students. Materials and methods The end-of-clerkship written assessment results of the four disciplines of medicine, surgery, gynecology, and pediatrics were included. This was a retrospective correlational analytical study conducted at Shifa Tameer-e-Millat University, Islamabad, from 2013 to 2017. Data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, version 23.0 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY); mean, standard deviation, Pearson coefficient, and p values were calculated both for MCQs and SAQs. Results A total of 481 students were involved in our study. The mean percentage scores of MCQs and SAQs in medicine were the most similar, and scores in obstetrics and gynecology had the most disparity. As compared to MCQs, the wider standard deviations were found in SAQs. Pearson correlations were 0.49, 0.47, 0.23, and 0.38 for medicine, surgery, gynecology, and pediatrics, respectively. Conclusion While we found mild to moderate significant correlation between MCQs and SAQs for final-year medical students, further investigations are required to explore the correlation and enhance the validity of our written assessments.