Developing and verifying the psychometric integrity of the certification examination for imaging informatics professionals

The American Board of Imaging Informatics (ABII) was founded in 2005 by the Society of Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM) and the American Registry of Radiologic Technologists (ARRT). ABII's mission is to enhance patient care, professionalism, and competence in imaging informatics. This is accomplished primarily through the development and administration of a certification examination. The creation of the exam has been an exercise in open community involvement with SIIM providing access to the PACS community and ARRT providing skilled psychometric support to ensure a balanced and comprehensive examination. The process to generate the exam required several years and the efforts of dozens of subject matter experts active who volunteered to submit and validate questions for the examination. This article describes the organizational and statistical processes used to generate test items, assemble test forms, set performance standards, and validate test scores.