Competencies and Exam Development Overview
To support the integrity of functional medicine practice, and in keeping with standards of practice among other medical and health professions, the Functional Medicine Certification Program™ is developed according to standards published by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA), which is the gold standard when it comes to accreditation of programs that certify professionals working in medicine, health, fitness, wellness, and other occupations. These standards guide the lifecycle of certification development, administration, and maintenance.
Job Analysis
A job analysis is a critical first step for professional testing that serves as the foundation of any credentialing program. It is a process conducted with a representative panel of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) that involves surveying those practicing in the field to define what competent practice looks like. The Functional Medicine Certification Program™ conducted an 18-month long formalized job analysis, which included a data-driven approach to define and validate the knowledge, skills, and abilities of the functional medicine discipline.
- Job analysis findings reflect the clinical expertise, polling, and input of subject matter experts and thousands of functional medicine practitioners and highlight the important differences in the practice of functional medicine, based on scope of licensure.
- These differences resulted in defining two sets of competencies and thus two certification designations based on differing scopes of practice.
Exam Development
The program uses panels of SMEs who represent the wide range of certified practitioners to write and review test questions to ensure that they are accurate, evidence-based, and reflective of current practice. Test items are written based on the competencies and used to build the test forms that are then delivered to candidates.
Psychometrics – the science of measuring competence – is also an important component of exam development. The program collects statistics on the performance of each exam item and conducts a regular psychometric analysis to determine if that item is performing well or poorly. If an item performs poorly, it may mean that the item is too vague, too difficult, or not effective at distinguishing between qualified or unqualified candidates. The cycle of test development is regular and ongoing, to ensure that test questions are fair, valid, and free from bias and that they are updated over time to ensure test content remains current.
Scoring
In high-stakes, professional testing, it is critical that the scoring decisions you make to determine whether or not someone earns the certification are sound. The process of establishing a passing score is commonly referred to as standard setting.
The Functional Medicine Certification Program™ sets and maintains the passing score following industry recognized methodologies based on testing standards and best practices. Ensuring that standard setting and all scoring processes are conducting following psychometric standards promotes both fairness and transparency in testing.