The Angoff standard setting method relies on content experts to review exam items and make judgments about the performance of the minimally proficient examinee. Unfortunately, at times content experts may have gaps in their understanding of specific exam content. These gaps are particularly likely to occur when the content domain is broad and/or…

This paper considers how to establish the minimum required level of professionally relevant oral communication ability in the medium of English for health practitioners with English as an additional language (EAL) to gain admission to practice in jurisdictions where English is the dominant language. A theoretical concern is the construct of…

A group-process approach to standard setting was compared to an independent approach for a medical specialty certification examination. Both approaches used the Angoff (1971) standard-setting method. In the group-process method, reviewers discussed items and their ratings during the rating process; in the independent condition, reviewers provided…

When setting standards, administrators of small-scale OSCEs often face several challenges, including a lack of resources, a lack of available expertise in statistics, and difficulty in recruiting judges. The Modified Borderline-Group Method is a standard setting procedure that compensates for these challenges by using physician examiners and is…

The concept of capacity, its ethical mandates, and a rationale for the assessment of capacity to execute a health care proxy was discussed. Special New York State regulations, relevant to the execution of a health care proxy by persons who have mental retardation, were reviewed, discussed, and compared with regulations in some other jurisdictions.…

Whether cutting score equivalents (CSEs) based on examinee performance are the same as CSEs based on expert judgment was examined using data from 3,262 examinees taking an internal medicine certification examination. CSEs produced by 40 physicians/experts were closer to the criteria than were standards derived from examinee performance. (SLD)