ArticleBMC medical education2025
Evaluating the multiple-choice questions quality at the College of Medicine, University of Bisha, Saudi Arabia: a three-year experience.
Article in BMC medical education, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Pooled it
- Comparison of the ChatGPT and deepseek models in responding to multiple choice questions related to rehabilitation of completely edentulous patients with complete dentures.BMC oral health · 2026Article
- Automatic- and Transformer-Based Automatic Item Generation: A Critical Review.Journal of Intelligence · 2025Review
- Quantitative and qualitative item analysis of exams of basic medical sciences departments of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences in 2023.BMC medical education · 2025Article
- Development of a pain management competency assessment for physiotherapy students: Integrating simulation and written assessments.Canadian journal of pain = Revue canadienne de la douleur · 2025Article
- Measuring Children's Knowledge of Acute Rheumatic Fever and Rheumatic Heart Disease: Development and Validation of RHD Knowledge Scale in Nepal.Inquiry : a journal of medical care organization, provision and financingArticle
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundAssessment is a central tool that drives and shapes students learning. Multiple choice questions (MCQs) are central in medical education assessment because they evaluate knowledge across large cohorts. Good quality items will help to achieve the learning objectives and provide trustful results. This study aims to evaluate the quality of MCQs utilized in the final exams of the Principal of Diseases (PRD) course over three academic years at the College of Medicine at The University of Bisha, Saudi Arabia.
methodThis cross-sectional institutional-based study used the final exams from the PRD course for the academic years 2016-2019. It was conducted at the College of Medicine, University of Bisha (UBCOM), Saudi Arabia (SA). The analysis process used item analysis (IA) of the PRD final theoretical examinations of the 2016-2017, 2017-2018, and 2018-2019 academic years. 80, 70, and 60 MCQ items were used per test in the above-mentioned years, respectively (210 total). The IA targets the reliability (KR20), difficulty index (DIF), discrimination index (DI), and distractor effectiveness (DE). The generated data were analyzed using SPSS (version 25.0), and statistical significance was set at P < 0.05.
resultsThe exams included 210 items. The reliability (KR20) ranged from 0.804 to 0.906. The DI indicated that 56.7% of items were excellent, 20.9% were good, 13.8% were poor, and 8.6% were defective. The DIF showed that 50.5% of items had acceptable difficulty, 37.6% were easy, and 11.9% were difficult. DE analysis revealed that 70.2% of distractors were functional, with a significant correlation between DI, DIF, and DE (P < 0.05).
conclusionMost of the examined items exhibited excellent discrimination and acceptable difficulty, with 70.2% having functional distractors, categorizing them as high-quality and well-constructed items. The study accentuates the importance of continuous item analysis to maintain and improve the quality of assessment tools used in medical education.
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