Abstract

ABAUNZA CHAGIN, María Claudia; VARGAS CARRENO, Elga Johanna  and  RINCON RODRIGUEZ, Carlos Javier. Falso o verdadero: es esa la pregunta?True or false: is that the question?. Iatreia [online]. 2015, vol.28, n.2, pp.120-127. ISSN 0121-0793.  https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.iatreia.v28n2a02.

Objectives: Standard tests designed for medical students frequently include objective True/ False (T/F) questions, in which there are only two possible answers that can be successfully reached at random. The purpose of this work was to demonstrate that asking for support of the answers diminishes the number of randomly correct ones, so improving the ability of questions to verify learnings. Methods: 8.188 T/F questions whose answers had to be supported; they were applied in 28 written tests of Pathology, at the undergraduate medical program (La Sabana University, Chía, Colombia). Answers were classified as correct or incorrect, and their support, as correct, partially correct and incorrect. In order to analyze the data, the kappa agreement coefficient between T/F questions and T/F questions with support was calculated, as well as per term and per test. Results: Out of 8.188 T/F questions, 6.112 (74.6%) were correctly answered as true or false, 3.655 (44.6%) had a correct support, and 2.336 (28.5%) were not correctly supported, exhibiting a global agreement index of 0.378 and low agreement indexes per term. Conclusion: T/F questions could be accompanied by support of the answers in order to reduce the probability of randomly correct ones, to enhance the development of superior cognitive processes, and communicative essential competences.

Keywords : Education; Medical, Educational Measurement; Undergraduate Medical Education.

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