Conference Proceedings - School of Nursing & Midwifery - Trinity ...

School of Nursing & Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin: 8 th Annual Interdisciplinary Research Conference
Transforming Healthcare Through Research, Education & Technology: 7 th – 9 th November 2007
Conference Proceedings
Objectives of the study
To identify performance variation by students partaking in multiple
choice questions versus written questions.
To identify variation between General, Mental Health and
Intellectual Disability Nursing students in examination performance,
with regards to multiple choice questions or written questions
To explore pedagogical / psychological determinants in the
identified variation.
Methodology including research design and sampling
Results will be correlated from Hilary and Trinity second year
biological science exams in 2006 and 2007 for all nursing
disciplines. Only data in the public domain will be utilized. The
multiple choice question papers consists of 30 questions with no
negative marking. Each question has one correct answer out of four
choices. The written papers consist of seen and unseen long answer
questions and are marked out off 100% with the full range of marks
allowed. Weighting is applied to each examination paper and varies
throughout the year. Both exams comprise knowledge based
questions (not case histories or problem solving).
Analysis
The results from each exam will be converted to percentages. For
each student, the difference between the MCQ result and the
written result is calculated and compared against the average for
the two results.
Summary of key findings
Findings, analysis and discussion will be completed by the end of
July 2007.
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