Medical students’ thought process while solving problems in 3 different types of clinical assessments in Korea: clinical performance examination, multimedia case-based assessment, and modified essay question

PURPOSE: This study aimed to explore students’ cognitive patterns while solving clinical problems in 3 different types of assessments—clinical performance examination (CPX), multimedia case-based assessment (CBA), and modified essay question (MEQ)—and thereby to understand how different types of assessments stimulate different patterns of thinking. METHODS: A total of 6 test-performance cases from 2 fourth-year medical students were used in this cross-case study. Data were collected through one-on-one interviews using a stimulated recall protocol where students were shown videos of themselves taking each assessment and asked to elaborate on what they were thinking. The unit of analysis was the smallest phrases or sentences in the participants’ narratives that represented a meaningful cognitive occurrence. The narrative data were reorganized chronologically and then analyzed according to the hypothetico-deductive reasoning framework for clinical reasoning. RESULTS: Both participants demonstrated similar proportional frequencies of clinical reasoning patterns on the same clinical assessments. The results also revealed that the three different assessment types may stimulate different patterns of clinical reasoning. For example, the CPX strongly promoted the participants’ reasoning related to inquiry strategy, while the MEQ strongly promoted hypothesis generation. Similarly, data analysis and synthesis by the participants were more strongly stimulated by the CBA than by the other assessment types. CONCLUSION: This study found that different assessment designs stimulated different patterns of thinking during problem-solving. This finding can contribute to the search for ways to improve current clinical assessments. Importantly, the research method used in this study can be utilized as an alternative way to examine the validity of clinical assessments.