Investigation of answer changes on the USMLE® Step 2 Clinical Knowledge examination

BMC Medical Education

Table 4 Response change patterns and outcomes by examinee ability for block 4

	High Ability (n = 13,405)		Medium Ability (n = 11,917)		Low Ability (n = 2508)
	Mean number of items	%	Mean number of items	%	Mean number of items	%
Items with revisits	17.9	40.7%	14.6	33.2%	12.1	27.5%
Items with revisits and no response change	16.5	92.2%^a	13.2	90.4%^a	10.7	88.4%
Items with revisits and response change	1.4	7.8%^a	1.4	9.6%^a	1.4	11.6%
W-R	0.63		0.56		0.51
R-W	0.40		0.39		0.40
R-R	0.04		0.03		0.03
W-W	0.33		0.41		0.50
W-R/R-W ratio	1.58		1.44		1.28
Mean score change	0.005		0.004		0.003

W-R wrong to right response changes, R-W right to wrong response changes, W-W wrong to wrong response changes, R-R right to right response changes
^aPercentage is calculated based on items with revisits

ISSN: 1472-6920