ABSTRACT
Introduction :Single best answer MCQs (Multiple Choice Questions) are becoming a popular form of formative as well as summative assessment in educational institutes, not only but including medical field. Formation of MCQs with appropriate level of difficulty and excellent level of discrimination power is a huge task and failing in it, results in failure of test and by that we end up with poor discrimination among high and low performing students. Difficulty index (p-value) and Discrimination Indices (DI) are tools that enable us to choose appropriate MCQs while planning the assessment of students. Method :The cross-sectional study was conducted in the department of Community Medicine of Government Medical College, Surat in June-July 2016, with 103 medical students of third year. As a routine practice formative assessment was planned with 40 MCQs, each have 4 options with one single best response as a key answer. The MCQs were analyzedfor difficulty index, discrimination index. Result :Analyzed item with p-value and DI showed half of the items were at appropriate difficulty level (p-value between 30% - 70%), with excellent discrimination power (>0.24) and substantial proportion of item had poor discrimination ability. Two items found to have negative discrimination value while another two had zero discrimination power. Conclusion :Item analysis is an excellent tool that help us in formation of proper MCQs that have average Difficulty Index (DIF) with excellent Discrimination Index (DI). Poorly formed MCQs should be revised or discarded for future assessment.
ABSTRACT
Background: Malnutrition is serious problem in India. ICDS provides supplementary nutrition through anganwadis to its beneficiaries. Aims & Objective: (1) To study quantitative effect of supplementary nutrition on physical growth of children beneficiaries of ICDS. (2) To understand determinants of physical growth among children registered with ICDS anganwadis. Material and Methods: It was a prospective cohort study done during September 2010 to August 2011. All children of three to five years of 6 randomly selected anganwadis of Jhagadia block of Bharuch district were selected for study. The pretested and predesigned questionnaire was used for collection of data from the mother of the children at their home. Anthropometric measurements were done at anganwadi. Data for availing of supplementary nutrition by child and was obtained from anganwadis. Follow up anthropometric measurements were done another two times over the period of one year. Results: Out of 104 children, 70 (67.3%) received adequate and 34 (32.7%) did not receive adequate supplementary nutrition. Both weight and height gain were more in the children who received adequate supplementary nutrition as compared to the children who did not receive adequate supplementary nutrition. Multivariate analysis indicated that, out of so many factors, supplementary nutrition and caste were the one which had significant effect on weight gain of children. Conclusion: Supplementary nutrition provided at anganwadi has significant impact on physical growth of its beneficiaries