Impact of one versus two content-specific modules on American board of family medicine certification examination scores

Background: we consider the question of whether requiring diplomates to select only 1 content-specific module,rather than 2,would increase,decrease,or produce no change in scores among the examinee population. methods: examinees' scores were computed under 3 different conditions: the examination core plus (1) both modules,(2) the module on which they scored higher,and (3) the module on which they scored lower. results: although the differences in scores across the 3 conditions were relatively small,asking examinees to select only a single module would likely benefit more examinees than it would harm by a 4:1 ratio,assuming that the diplomates selected the module on which they scored higher. only 114 of the 29,088 examinees (0.4%) would have changed from a pass to a fail,whereas 467 (1.6%) would have changed from fail to pass. conclusion: these results suggest that having examinees select 1 module rather than 2 will likely produce a slight score increase for examinees. simultaneously,it would improve the standardization of the examination across examinees.