Go back
The years below run from one summer board meeting until the next meeting.
Year 1 summer board meeting until year 2 summer board meeting
Board members write questions for their exam subcommittee and submit them to the office.
Year 2 prior to the summer meeting
The office sends all the new questions to the members on each of the subcommittees. Subcommittee members review the questions suggesting changes and suggesting the question pool (CE/MOC or ITE) to which the question should be assigned. The office collates the suggestions.
Year 2 at the summer meeting
Either at the meeting itself or via subcommittee webinar, the subcommittee reviews the question and the collated suggestions. The subcommittee may edit the question as a group. It then decides if the question should be deleted, sent back for rewrite, or assigned to a question pool.
Year 2 prior to the winter meeting (prior to the year 3 summer meeting for ITE)
The office sends each of the subcommittee Chairs the questions in the CE/MOC pool. The subcommittee Chair pre-selects a group of question (35-40% more questions than are needed for the CE/MOC exam) and sends those to the office. The office sends the pre-selections to all of the subcommittee members. The subcommittee members suggest which question to select for the exam. They may also make suggestions – further edits, return for rewrite, discard. If rewritten, then the question is treated like a new question at that point.
Year 2 at the winter meeting
At the winter meeting, the subcommittee decides on the final disposition for the question. If the question is not selected for the CE/MOC exam, it may languish in the pool for several years until it is used, or never be used.
A question in ITE pool is treated slightly differently. To save time at the year 3 summer meeting, a member of the exam committee does the final selection. Part of having a psychometrically valid exam is that the exam content reflects a consensus. In the case of the CE/MOC, the whole subcommittee provides consensus. In the case of the ITE, a exam committee member not on the subcommittee does the final selection. This expediency saves summer meeting time for non-exam issues.
Year 3 CE/MOC or ITE exam
After the question is used on year 3 CE/MOC or ITE exam, MRA calculates statistics about the performance of the question. Based on the statistics as well as the question itself, the exam committee with guidance from the MRA psychometrician may decide that the question should be used to score the candidates or deleted from scoring. A question elated from scoring may be sent for rewriting or deleted from the pool, but generally the question is returned to the pool for the subcommittee to make those decisions.
Subsequently
The question may make several cycles through the pre-selection / selection / exam / statistics processes. The only difference is that after having been used the question accumulates statistics, which help in the selection decisions.
Meetings
- Summer meeting. New or rewritten question are reviewed by the subcommittees at the summer meeting or by subcommittee webinar.
- Winter meeting. Question for the CE/MOC exam are selected by the subcommittees at the winter meeting or by subcommittee webinar.