Oral examinations

CLEAR Exam Review (Summer 1992)
Eric Werner, M.A.

Question: Our oral examination is under fire from some of those who have failed it and from some persons who have trained these failed persons. Certain state legislators have also questioned its effectiveness and fairness. Our board would like to do what it can to help assure a high-quality assessment process. What can you suggest?

Answer: Not very much in the space remaining to me. Here is a brief list of suggestions that might help you:

• Assume that your examination assesses demonstrably job-related, important factors. A job analysis should serve as the basis of your oral examination plan.
  

• Use your oral examination to test only factors that cannot be effectively measured with more conventional and efficient testing formats.
  

• Use a structured oral examination process; avoid clinical interviews, the substance and process of which vary from one candidate to the next.
  

• Carefully plan and pretest your examination questions, including follow-ups. Make sure the set of inquiries used represents a suitable sample of important job knowledge and abilities as defined in your exam plan.
  

• Use a structured, acceptably reliable process to evaluate candidate responses. Objectively define and pretest your rating scales.
  

• Teach examiners how to avoid common pitfalls of oral examining, which are documented in many texts and articles on this subject.
  

• Train examiners thoroughly in their tasks and in the candidate evaluation standards to be applied. Ensure that examiners can perform equivalently--that is, that they are calibrated to some standard.
  

• Analyze the results of the oral examination so that you have information on the performance of individual examiners, the reliability of the evaluations made, the questions that were more and less difficult, and so forth.

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