August 25, 2021
As part of our commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, ABOG will now be undertaking Differential Item Functioning (DIF) analyses as a way to investigate fairness and potential biases within ABOG’s initial certification processes. For our recent Specialty Qualifying Examination, ABOG collected demographic data for several candidates (in the future, this will be a part of exam applications) and is using the data within the analysis to identify exam items that performed differentially (statistically) among disparate demographic groups.
A group of subject matter experts will be part of a Bias Panel and will qualitatively review the items to determine if that differential performance is due to true bias. Items determined to be biased will be removed from scoring. Updates will be forthcoming on this topic as more analyses are completed.