32. Pilot Exam Use as a Predictor for the National Board Dental Hygiene Examination

Dental hygiene programs often look for ways to predict student performance on the National Board Dental Hygiene Examination (NBDHE). Our full-time faculty developed a pilot exam for our students in order to create a simulated testing experience. The pilot exam was developed by assigning specific content domains to each faculty member with many years of experience teaching the assigned subject. The pilot exam consisted of 175 multiple-choice questions. One hundred of those were stand-alone questions; the additional seventy-five questions were case-based. Students were given this pilot examination approximately three months prior to taking the NBDHE. A comparison of student scores on the pilot exam to their NBDHE scores in both the classes of 2006 and 2007 indicates a strong correlation between the two exams (r=0.719, p=<0.01, n=35, 2006; r=0.706, p=<0.01, n=36, 2007). Therefore, the pilot exam appears to be a predictor for a student’s success on the NBDHE. Additional analysis was done by ranking scores high to low. Those students ranking in the lower one-third were at risk for failure on the NBDHE. Those students scoring in the top third on the pilot exam consistently scored either in the 90th percentile or well above the national mean.