Why professional judgment is better than objective description in dental faculty evaluations of student performance.

Practices intended to increase the appearance of objectivity in grading may work at cross purposes with professional judgment. In this study, an analysis of two removable prosthodontics technique projects in one U.S. dental school found that the use of component criteria (checklist) grading was less consistent than overall judgments of the same work and less predictive of dental students' future learning. A factor analysis revealed latent structures in both projects that would make it inappropriate to use a component criteria approach for grading. Common defenses of objectivity-such as scientific foundation, the relationship between reliability and validity, and legal requirements-are questioned in this article, and it is shown how simple adjustments to judgment scores can be made more effective than checklists, faculty calibration, or deselecting faculty members and with better measurement and teaching features.