Submitted: 14 March 2024
Accepted: 13 November 2024
Published online: 1 April, TAPS 2025, 10(2), 91-93

Han Ting Jillian Yeo & Dujeepa D. Samarasekera

Centre for Medical Education (CenMED), Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore

I. INTRODUCTION

Assessment is an important component of training in ensuring that graduating students are competent to provide safe and effective medical care to patients. Typically, the passing score is set as a fixed mark, but this approach does not account for the varying difficulty of exams. As a result, students who have achieved the required level of competence might fail if the exam items are particularly challenging (false negative), while students who have not attained the necessary competence might pass if the items are unusually easy (false positive). Hence, deciding on the right pass mark is important for each assessment. To mitigate this issue, criterion referenced standard setting was adopted in medical education (Norcini, 2003). It determines the minimum competence level expected of a candidate and whether a candidate would pass or fail the assessments (Norcini, 2003). The Angoff method is one of the more commonly used standard setting techniques. It is an examinee centred method and requires a panel of judges to estimate the probability that a borderline candidate would get the item correct.