Acceptability of the 8-case objective structured clinical examination of medical students in Korea using generalizability theory: a reliability study

PURPOSE: This study investigated whether the reliability was acceptable when the number of cases in the objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) decreased from 12 to 8 using generalizability theory (GT). METHODS: This psychometric study analyzed the OSCE data of 439 fourth-year medical students conducted in the Busan and Gyeongnam areas of South Korea from July 12 to 15, 2021. The generalizability study (G-study) considered 3 facets—students (p), cases (c), and items (i)—and designed the analysis as p×(i:c) due to items being nested in a case. The acceptable generalizability (G) coefficient was set to 0.70. The G-study and decision study (D-study) were performed using G String IV ver. 6.3.8 (Papawork, Hamilton, ON, Canada). RESULTS: All G coefficients except for July 14 (0.69) were above 0.70. The major sources of variance components (VCs) were items nested in cases (i:c), from 51.34% to 57.70%, and residual error (pi:c), from 39.55% to 43.26%. The proportion of VCs in cases was negligible, ranging from 0% to 2.03%. CONCLUSION: The case numbers decreased in the 2021 Busan and Gyeongnam OSCE. However, the reliability was acceptable. In the D-study, reliability was maintained at 0.70 or higher if there were more than 21 items/case in 8 cases and more than 18 items/case in 9 cases. However, according to the G-study, increasing the number of items nested in cases rather than the number of cases could further improve reliability. The consortium needs to maintain a case bank with various items to implement a reliable blueprinting combination for the OSCE.