Comparison of aboriginal and nonaboriginal applicants for admissions on the multiple mini-interview using aboriginal and nonaboriginal interviewers

Background: Achievement on grade point average and Medical College Admissions Test contribute as unintentional barriers to advancement of underrepresented minorities. So long as noncognitive measures mimic random number generators, they merely perpetuate such discrepancies. As reliable noncognitive measures are developed, it is crucial to ensure immunity from bias, enabling them to better dilute unintended discrimination of cognitive measures. Purpose: The Multiple Mini-Interview (MMI) is a recently developed, reliable (overall reliability=.70), noncognitive measure used for assessment of medical school applicants. Our purpose in this study was to evaluate whether any suggestion of bias existed in application of the MMI in its assessment of aboriginal medical school applicants. Methods: In this study of the MMI (overall reliability 70), each of 5 self-declared aboriginal applicants and 7 general-pool applicants experienced the same 11 vetted interview stations with the same 6 aboriginal raters and 5 nonaboriginal raters. Results: The Interviewer Type x Interviewee Type interaction was nonsignificant, p>.7. Conclusion: Based on the results of this study, it is recommended that MMI stations be vetted by aboriginally sensitive personnel, but neither aboriginal-specific rater training nor aboriginal rater assignment is required to ensure a level playing field for the assessment of applicants' personal qualities.