Evaluation of advanced cardiac life support written examinations

Objective: To examine the quality of 2 advanced cardiac life support written examinations and the relationship between demographic variables and test performance. Design: Descriptive. Setting: Advanced cardiac life support courses held at 4 midwestern hospitals, one outpatient surgery center, and one community college. Subjects: Nonprobability sample of 367 participants. Outcome Measure: Two versions of the American Heart Association advanced cardiac life support written examinations. Results: Reliability coefficients of test A and test B were 0.45 and 0.54, respectively. Discrimination and difficulty indices calculated on both tests revealed that test B questions were more difficult, with better discriminators. Prior experience, sex of participant, and profession were identified as factors influencing test performance. Conclusion: Although test B surpassed the performance of test A, both examinations were problematic. Additional investigation and refinement of the advanced cardiac life support tests are warranted. (Heart Lung® 2000;29:118-24.)