Perceptions of medical students towards the practice of professionalism at the Arabian Gulf University

Background To enhance the development of a curriculum in professionalism for medical students, the aim of this research was to evaluate medical students’ responses regarding professionalism teaching and behaviors in their clinical experience at the Arabian Gulf University (AGU). Methods A retrospective cross-sectional, questionnaire-based study involving Year 5 medical students at the AGU. We used a “climate of professionalism” survey that consisted of two parts. The first part asked students to rate their perceptions of the frequency of professionalism practices of their peers (medical students), residents, and faculty. The response choices included: “mostly”, “sometimes”, and “rarely”. The second part asked the students to assess their perceptions of the professionalism teaching and behaviors of the faculty. The response choices included: “mostly”, “sometimes”, and “rarely”. We calculated an overall score for the responses in both parts of the questionnaire by assigning 3, 2, and 1 points to the response choices, respectively. We also calculated subscale scores reflecting different professionalism constructs. We used descriptive statistics and a one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) followed by multiple testing comparisons with Bonferroni correction to examine pairwise comparisons. A p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results The mean total scores of participants’ ratings of professional behaviors of medical students, residents, and faculty for each academic year were approximately 60% of the total maximum score. The mean total scores of participants’ rating of faculty’s teaching and modeling behaviors concerning professionalism were approximately 58% of the maximum score. Compared with similar studies performed in the Arab Region, ratings regarding professional teaching and modeling of professionalism were lower. Conclusion We recommend the further evaluation of professionalism teaching and behaviors at the AGU and further discussions regarding curriculum reform.

Linguistic validation of the simplified Chinese version of the US National Cancer Institute’s patient-reported outcomes version of the common terminology criteria for adverse events (PRO-CTCAE™)

Background The aim of this study was to translate and linguistically validate the U.S. National Cancer Institute’s Patient-Reported Outcomes version of the Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (PRO-CTCAE™) into Simplified Chinese for use in Singapore. Methods All 124 items of the English source PRO-CTCAE item library were translated into Simplified Chinese using internationally established translation procedures. Two rounds of cognitive interviews were conducted with 96 cancer patients undergoing adjuvant treatment to determine if the translations adequately captured the PRO-CTCAE source concepts, and to evaluate comprehension, clarity and ease of judgement. Interview probes addressed the 78 PRO-CTCAE symptom terms (e.g. fatigue), as well as the attributes (e.g. severity), response choices, and phrasing of ‘at its worst’. Items that met the a priori threshold of ≥20% of participants with comprehension difficulties were considered for rephrasing and retesting. Items where < 20% of the sample experienced comprehension difficulties were also considered for rephrasing if better phrasing options were available. Results A majority of PRO-CTCAE-Simplified Chinese items were well comprehended by participants in Round 1. One item posed difficulties in ≥20% and was revised. Two items presented difficulties in < 20% but were revised as there were preferred alternative phrasings. Twenty-four items presented difficulties in < 10% of respondents. Of these, eleven items were revised to an alternative preferred phrasing, four items were revised to include synonyms. Revised items were tested in Round 2 and demonstrated satisfactory comprehension. Conclusions PRO-CTCAE-Simplified Chinese has been successfully developed and linguistically validated in a sample of cancer patients residing in Singapore.

Retinal ganglion cell defects cause decision shifts in visually evoked defense responses

Flight and freezing response choices evoked by visual stimuli are controlled by brain stem and thalamic circuits. Genetically modified mice with loss of specific retinal ganglion cell (RGC) subpopulations have altered flight versus freezing choices in response to some but not other visual stimuli. This finding suggests that “threatening” visual stimuli may be computed already at the level of the retina and communicated via dedicated pathways (RGCs) to the brain.

Validating the Iowa Test of Consonant Perception

Speech perception, especially in background noise, is a critical problem for hearing impaired listeners, and an important issue for cognitive hearing science. Despite a plethora of standardized measures, there are few single-word, closed-set tasks that uniformly sample the phonetic space and which use response choices that balance all phonetic features. The Iowa Test of Consonant Perception (ITCP) was developed to solve this. It is a phonemically balanced word recognition task designed to assess perception of the initial consonant of monosyllabic consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words. The ITCP consists of 120 phonetically balanced CVC words. Words were recorded from four different talkers (two female), and uniformly sample from all four corners of the vowel space to control for coarticulation. Response choices on each trial are balanced to equate difficulty and sample a single phonetic feature. This study evaluated the psychometric properties of ITCP by examining reliability (test-retest) and validity in a sample of online normal hearing participants. Ninety-eight participants completed two sessions of the ITCP along with standardized tests of words and sentence in noise (CNC words and AzBio sentences). The ITCP showed good test-retest reliability and convergent validity with two popular speech-in-noise tasks. ITCP materials are freely available here: https://osf.io/hycdu/.

Death by a Thousand 10-Minute Tasks: Workarounds and Noncompliance in University Research Administration

The article examines administrative workarounds in the context of university research administration. The empirical results from 116 semi-structured interviews with academic researchers with active National Science Foundation awards are framed by a “Rules Response” model positing relationships among rules compliance requests, administrative burden, red tape, and response choices, including compliance, appeal, rule bending, rule breaking, and workaround behaviors. Propositions are presented and reviewed in light of empirical results. The article concludes the implications of empirical results for improving the Rules Response model and a more general discussion of research needed to improve the understanding of both rules compliance and workarounds.

Evaluation of the Effect of Items’ Format and Type on Psychometric Properties of Sixth Year Pharmacy Students Clinical Clerkship Assessment Items

Background Examinations are the traditional assessment tools. In addition to measurement of learning, exams are used to guide the improvement of academic programs. The current study attempted to evaluate the quality of assessment items of sixth year clinical clerkships examinations as a function of assessment items format and type/structure and to assess the effect of the number of response choices on the characteristics of MCQs as assessment items. Methods A total of 173 assessment items used in the examinations of sixth year clinical clerkships of a PharmD program were included. Items were classified as case based or noncase based and as MCQs or open-ended. The psychometric characteristics of the items were studied as a function of the Bloom’s levels addressed, item format, and number of choices in MCQs. Results Items addressing analysis skills were more difficult. No differences were found between case based and noncase based items in terms of their difficulty, with a slightly better discrimination in the latter . Open-ended items were easier, yet more discriminative. MCQs with higher number of options were easier. Open-ended questions were significantly more discriminative in comparison to MCQs as case based items while they were more discriminative as noncase based items. Conclusion Item formats, structure, and number of options in MCQs significantly affected the psychometric properties of the studied items. Noncase based items and open-ended items were easier and more discriminative than case based items and MCQs, respectively. Examination items should be prepared considering the above characteristics to improve their psychometric properties and maximize their usefulness.

Evaluation of the Effect of Items’ Format and Type on Psychometric Properties of Sixth Year Pharmacy Students Clinical Clerkship Assessment Items

Background Examinations are the traditional assessment tools. In addition to measurement of learning, exams are used to guide the improvement of academic programs. The current study attempted to evaluate the quality of assessment items of sixth year clinical clerkships examinations as a function of assessment items format and type/structure and to assess the effect of the number of response choices on the characteristics of MCQs as assessment items . Methods. A total of 173 assessment items used in the examinations of sixth year clinical clerkships of a PharmD program were included. Items were classified as case based or noncase based and as MCQs or open-ended. The psychometric characteristics of the items were studied as a function of the Bloom’s levels addressed, item format, and number of choices in MCQs. Results . Items addressing analysis skills were more difficult. No differences were found between case based and noncase based items in terms of their difficulty, with a slightly better discrimination in the latter . Open-ended items were easier, yet more discriminative. MCQs with higher number of options were easier and more discriminative. Open-ended questions were significantly easier and more discriminative in comparison to MCQs as case based items while they were more difficult and more discriminative as noncase based items. Conclusion. Item formats, structure, and number of options in MCQs significantly affected the psychometric properties of the studied items. Noncase based items and open-ended items were easier and more discriminative than case based items and MCQs, respectively. Examination items should be prepared considering the above characteristics to improve their psychometric properties and maximize their usefulness.

Subjective Values Theory: The Psychophysics of Psychological Value

People perceive the Psychological Value of all stimuli. Cohen and colleagues (Under Review; 2016) have measured perceived Psychological Values of a variety of stimuli and demonstrated that those measurements predict participants’ RTs and response choices in preferential choice tasks. Here, we examine the psychophysical properties of perceived Psychological Value. The current work examines how the perceived Psychological Value of a group of items changes as a function of (a) the number of items, and (b) the perceived Psychological Values of the individual items in the group. If more is better, as the Axiom of Monotonicity assumes, then the perceived Psychological Value of the group should be a function of the sum of the perceived Psychological Values of the individual items in the group. Ensemble stimuli, in contrast, are generally averaged (termed perceptual averaging). If Psychological Value is perceived similar to other perceptual dimensions, then the perceived Psychological Value of the group should be a function of the average of the perceived Psychological Values of the individual items in the group. Using a magnitude estimation procedure, we collected perceived Psychological Values of individual items and groups of items. Results indicate that perceived Psychological Value of groups is well predicted by a function of the average of the perceived Psychological Values of the individual items in the group (i.e., perceptual averaging rather than summing), with some influence of the maximum valued item (i.e., attentional capture of high valued stimuli).