Anyone know how accurate the CAT mosbys test is?

[loryisanurse]

I have done the saunders book, and now doing about 100 questions a day. I felt I wanted to see how my studing was going, so I bought Mosbys CAT testing online. It says I have a 92% probility of passing the nclex! Just was wondering how accurate this was? I still plan on finishing the plan that suzanne has set up for us and have about 5 more weeks of 100 questions. thanks in advance!

Lory

[Elleann]

Hi Lory

I asked the same question a couple of days ago, but it seems not many people have used this product. I had one reply and she seemed to like it but as to accuracy, I'm not sure ...

I wrote the Mosby people to find out how they estimated these 'probability of passing' percentages. They explained that each question was (like the NCLEX) rated for difficulty. Test takers who consistently correctly answered questions with a difficulty level from 0.07 to 0.34 had a 94% probability of passing, while anyone getting questions of 0.35 and over consistently correct had a 99% probability of passing. (She gave me the whole break-down - PM me if you want the whole thing).

I've done the test four times already and achieved 99%, 94%, 99% and 99% respectively with most of my category percentiles in the high 90s. So initially I felt very encouraged, but I do have a concern re the accuracy of this.

1. Very few management questions come up.

2. Priority questions are usually geared towards steps in treating one patient as opposed to triaging four patients.

3. My BIGGEST worry point: the questions in the Mosby CAT keep repeating as you do more tests. On test three, I got a 42% repeat question rate, which I think is unacceptably high. I'm doing test 5 now and so far, the repeat question rate is at 47% (I'm on question 116). They claim to have a dBase of 1800 questions, so this bothers me a LOT! ON the plus side, their rationales are excellent and help with the learning / understanding thing.

4. I'm having trouble figuring out the difficulty level thing - the first questions are always way low (-0.33) and my last question didn't seem THAT hard compared with what had gone before, yet when I stopped the exam, it said that it was 2.18 - very weird. It's almost as if they work from bottom to top without being adaptive - which I thought was the whole point of the CAT!

Anyway, it would be cool to hear what you (and anyone else) thinks of this product. I don't want to start feeling that I'm going to pass based on this, only to find out it is WAY wrong!!

Blessings

Elleann