Fig. 3From: Assessing professional competence in optometry – a review of the development and validity of the written component of the competency in optometry examination (COE)Correlation between candidate performance and cutscore for the multiple choice question (MCQ) and short answer question (SAQ) exams. A strong relationship was observed for the MCQ exams (r2 = 0.74, p < 0.001) and the SAQ exams from September 2017 to August 2019 (r2 = 0.95, p = 0.005). The SAQ exams from April 2014 to April 2017 used a standard cutscore of 50%. The high correlation for the SAQ exams from September 2017 to August 2019 highlights the benefit of using Rasch analysis to set the cutscore compared to the 50% cutscore used previouslyBack to article page