Easy incidences and excellent discrimination in an examination on Human Anatomy: is that possible?

Abstract

Background: evaluation is an essential element in the educational process, so its quality is essential in the current conditions of mass.
Objective: to analyze the quality of short response items of Human Anatomy in the ordinary examination of Nervous, Endocrine and Reproductive System in the University of Medical Sciences of Matanzas, course 2016-2017.
Methods: an evaluation study was carried out in the field of the teaching-learning process, within the framework of medical education. Theoretical, empirical methods and statistical processing were applied. We analyzed 513 ordinary exams in their levels of difficulty and discrimination in the sections of Human Anatomy.
Results: the most relevant were the following: in question 1 the difficulty of the subparagraphs ranged from highly to moderately easy, although the discrimination turned out to be good, since few students were wrong, but they turned out to be suspended in the exam, which was worth in the excellent discrimination of highly easy incidents. In the 2 the difficulty was average, with incidents moderately easy and difficult and its level of discrimination turned out to be excellent. Items c and d showed an unusual but very good combination of difficulty and excellent discrimination. In questions 4, 5 and 7 good results were obtained, but subsection 7.5 presented an unfavorable relationship for the evaluation, with poor discrimination of a highly easy clause.
Conclusions: the applied test presented a balanced and adequate difficulty to the required standards and a mostly qualified discrimination of excellent.