title: Does examiner bias in undergraduate oral and clinical surgery examinations occur?
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Oral and long case clinical examinations are open to subjective influences to some extent, and students may be marked unfairly as a result of gender or racial bias or language problems. These concerns are of topical relevance in South Africa. The purpose of this study was to assess whether these factors influenced the marks given in these examinations.
  
  
  METHODS
  Final-year surgery examination results from the University of Cape Town from 2003 to 2006 were reviewed. These each consisted of a multiple choice paper, an objective structured clinical examination, a long case clinical examination and an oral examination.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The marks of 604 students were analysed. Students who spoke English as a home language performed better in all examination modalities. Female students scored slightly higher than males overall, but they scored similarly in the clinical and oral examinations. There were significant differences in the marks scored between the various population groups in all examination modalities, with white students achieving the highest scores, and black students the lowest. These differences were most marked in multiple choice examinations, and least marked in oral and clinical examinations.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We could find no evidence of systemic bias in the oral and clinical examinations in our department, which reinforces the need for ongoing academic support for students from disadvantaged educational backgrounds, and for those who do not speak English as a home language.
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, University of Cape Town. D.Stupart@uct.ac.za
authors.forename: Douglas
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Stupart
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Goldberg
authors.forename: Jake
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Krige
authors.forename: Delawir
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Khan
mesh_terms: D044383:Black People / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003144:Communication Barriers; D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate; D004521:Educational Measurement; D005260:Female; D013502:General Surgery / Q000193:education*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015588:Observer Variation; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D013019:South Africa; D044465:White People / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*