Descriptive Analysis of the Psychometric Properties of Extended Matching Questions Conducted Among Anaesthesia Residents

Background: clinical reasoning is one of the core features of clinical competency. training and assessing clinical reasoning is vital in postgraduate training. extended matching questions􀀁(emqs) are effective in assessing problem-solving and clinical reasoning abilities, but not commonly used in postgraduate training. covid-19 pandemic, which prevented both patient encounter and regular academic activities, warranted the introduction of innovative teaching-learning methods to sustain clinical reasoning skills. hence, we aimed to introduce emqs in formative assessment among anesthesia residents and analyzed its psychometric properties. methods: the study was conducted at the department of anaesthesiology, mahatma gandhi medical college and research institute (mgmcri), pondicherry, india. four modules of emqs as part of a formative assessment was conducted among residents (n=20). a total of 40 clinical vignettes and 60 options were administered. post-validation of the emqs was done by item analysis. test reliability was estimated by the kuder-richardson 20 formula. difficulty index (dif-i), discrimination index (dis-i), and distractor functionality were analyzed. results: the kr-20 reliability coefficient was 0.72. the mean dif-i was 0.43±0.17, from which 72.5% (29) were in the acceptable range, 20% (8) difficult, and 7.5% (3) easy. the mean dis-i was 0.28±0.24, where 40% (16) had acceptable, 27.5% (11) excellent, and 20% had poor discrimination. ninety percent of distractors were functional. the disi exhibited a positive correlation with dif-i (r= 0.2155, p=0.0185). conclusions: the results of the present study indicated that emqs have acceptable test reliability. the majority of the items (80%) followed the principles of mcqs. we concluded that emqs can be effectively used as part of the postgraduate assessment to test higher-order knowledge and clinical competency