Teaching and Learning for Health Professionals

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  • Standard Setting for assessments
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Standard Setting for assessments

Standard Setting - introductory information

Standard Setting is any process by which the pass mark (or any other cut-off score) is established for a particular assessment. Standards are statements about whether candidates' performance is good enough for a particular purpose. The standard can define the boundary between passing and failing and/or enable us to separate out candidates who are competent from those who are not competent.

So - standards are useful in "...identifying individuals who possess the minimum required knowledge, skills and abilities” [and] “…maintaining a minimum standard of job related skills and competencies” (Donnoe and Amato, 1997)

Such standards are based on judgments examiners make about examinees’ performances and the nature of the skill or subject matter. The method has to be: defensible, credible, supported by body of evidence in the literature, feasible and acceptable to all stakeholders (Norcini, 2003; Norcini & Shea, 1997). Picking a pass mark of 50% then making sure the distribution maps onto this is not a defensible approach in professional training as it produces relative standards and examination results that cannot be compared to an agreed standard or compared year on year. For the accreditation of health professionals as safe, competent practitioners, it is necessary to show that the examinations are referenced to an agreed minimum standard of skills, knowledge and attitudes.

There is now an extensive body of literature on Standard Setting and numerous methods of achieving it for different examination formats. At the University of Bristol we are developing better examinations by improving on the standard setting techniques we use and also providing training to staff involved in these processes.

The TLHP team are running the following, and other, workshops on assessments and Standard Setting:

1. Introduction to Standard Setting
2. Standard Setting - objective tests
3. Standard Setting - marking schemes

Key staff have been invited to attend these so that they are fully familiar with the process and can obtain support in further development or implementing any changes.

If you work for the University of Bristol or Academies connected to its Medical School and would be interested in attending workshops on standard setting, please contact tlhp-workshops@bristol.ac.uk

Indicative reading:

• Berk, RA. (1986). 'A Consumers Guide to Setting Performance Standards on Criterion-Referenced Tests'. Review of Educational Research (56): 137-172.
• Cizek, GJ and Bunch, MB. (2007). Standard Setting: A Guide to Establishing and Evaluating Performance Standards on Tests. London: Sage Publications.
• Downing, SM, Tekian, A and Yudkowsky, R. (2006). 'Procedures for establishing defensible absolute passing scores on performance examinations in health professions education'. Teaching and Learning in Medicine (18): 50-57.
• Norcini, JJ. (2003). 'Setting standards on educational tests'. Medical Education (37): 464-469.
• Norcini, JJ and Shea, JA. (1997). 'The credibility and comparability of standards'. Applied Measurement in Education (10): 39-59.