The use of global ratings in OSCE station scores.

The Medical Council of Canada makes use of examiners' pass/borderline/fail judgments of candidates' performances in OSCE stations in defining cutting scores for these stations. This process assumes that there is consistency in the judgments of different examiners used in the same stations at different testing sites. This assumption was tested using the results of the fall 1994 administration of part 2 of the Medical Council of Canada Qualifying Examination. The Council anticipated using the examiner based global ratings as part of the OSCE station scores in the fall 1995 administration of the examination. In this study, the fall 1994 results were used to estimate to what extent test reliability would increase with the addition of the global ratings.