ArticleBMC medical education2025
Detection of flawed multiple-choice questions in preclinical medical education using item difficulty and discrimination indices: a six-year analysis.
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 1 paper.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Improving MCQ quality using a self-evaluation checklist: A quasi-experimental study.Journal of Taibah University Medical Sciences · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundMCQ exams may include flawed items affecting validity. Psychometric indicators such as item difficulty (p-value) and point-biserial coefficient (r
methodsExam analyses from 32 preclinical courses (academic years 2017-2022) were reviewed. Items meeting predefined thresholds were flagged, while all items were manually reviewed when the most frequently chosen answer was not the keyed correct answer or when multiple options had similar p-values. Flagged items were sent to course directors for verification, and only confirmed items were recorded as corrections.
resultsAmong 236 exams, 59 (25.0%) required corrections, with at least 1 corrected item. Of 14,238 total items, 81 (0.6%) required correction, most due to 'multiple-answers' (46.9%), followed by 'wrong-answer' (40.7%), awarding points to all choices ('all-choices') (7.4%), and 'item-removal' (4.9%) causes. Of 77 corrected items with available p- and r
conclusionWhile p- and/or r
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.