Towards a greater understanding of narrative data on trainee performance

Abstract

In a research paper in this issue of Medical Education, Wilby et al (1) present a study on the interpretation of narrative data generated by assessors in a final year OSCE for pharmacy students in Qatar. The authors collated the written comments on the performance of a sample of nine students (of good, average and poor performance standard) across all 6 of the OSCE stations and enlisted expert-assessors to review them, using think-aloud procedures and verbal protocol analysis. The overall purpose was to explore how expert-assessors understand the narratives written by others in the setting of a standardized performance assessment. In other words, how we seek to reconstruct a learner’s unwitnessed performance based on descriptions provided by others.