THE PULSE - CHSE-A, CHSOS-A Applications Close Sept. 1 > The Society for Simulation in Healthcare
JOIN/RENEW SSH
21

Greetings from your Certification Team!

 

As a reminder, CHSE-A and CHSOS-A applications are open and will close September 1.

If you are applying this cycle and have any questions or concerns, please email director@simcertification.com. In other news, the CHSE and CHSOS programs are gearing up to start the item development cycle. I have been sending out emails looking for volunteers to write test questions. If you are on the fence about volunteering let me share with you why SSH chooses to use certified volunteers to write test questions rather than contract with professional test question writers.

Why SSH uses certified volunteers for test questions

First, all volunteers receive formal training from the examination vendor on how to write consistent, unambiguous, and psychometrically sound test questions. We do not send volunteers into the wild without support for any activity, but especially item writing! While professional item writers receive similar, but more in-depth training, we feel no amount of item development training will provide what our volunteers will provide, and that is accuracy and relevance.

Volunteers who work in the field, as our certified individuals do, have a lens that professional item writers do not. That lens allows our item writers to determine if the world of theory (what is written in the professional literature) is in alignment with the world of practice (what is actually done in the role day-to-day). As part of our ongoing efforts to produce examinations that are fair, valid, and reliable, this lens is paramount. For example, there are countless references on educational theory with twice as many expert opinions. A professional item writer could create hundreds upon hundreds of multiple-choice questions using these references. While these questions may meet the standards for formatting and clarity, only a healthcare simulation operations specialist or educator using these theories with healthcare simulation learners in practice would have the ability to both disseminate what is presented in these references into a test question without making a factual error or misalignment (accuracy) and determine how to correctly align these theories with real-world scenarios and challenges (relevance).

Keeping in tune with our rigor of producing fair, valid, and reliable exams, another way certified volunteers add value is by using that real-world experience and their experience sitting for the exam as a gauge for the importance of the content being tested. It may sound funny, but we have what we call the “flip the table” check where item writers are instructed to read the test question they wrote as if they were seeing it on their exam. They are told if the question makes them feel like they want to flip a table, they should reevaluate and rewire the question.

If this has convinced you to try your hand at writing test questions, please reach out as we are always looking for more volunteers. And, for folks who are not yet certified, I hope this helps relieves some test anxiety by getting more insight into how questions are developed.

Until next time, be excellent to each other,

 

Rachel Araujo
SSH Director of Certification

Actions: E-mail | Permalink |