Medical students’ perspectives on an assessment of reflective portfolios [response to letter]

Abstract

We thank Forenc et al1 for their interest in our study titled Construct Validity of an Instrument for Assessment of Reflective Writing-Based Portfolios of Medical Students.2 In their Letter to Editor, their main critique concerned the extent to which the nonanonymity of reflective portfolios and the lack of reflection prompts to students may have affected the G-theory analysis. In their view, these two aspects will have reduced the percentage variance of the object of measurement (students) and thus influenced the variance attributed to the study facets. In addition, they draw attention that the study instrument might not be replicable for clinical students, due to increased complexity of the learning environment. We address their concerns in turn.