Exploring the introduction of entrustment rating scales in an existing objective structured clinical examination

Background: The concept of EPAs is increasingly applied to assess trainees’ workplace performance by means of entrustment ratings. OSCEs assess performance in a simulated setting, and it is unclear whether entrustment ratings can be integrated into these exams. This study explores the introduction of an entrustment rating scale into an existing OSCE. Methods: A 6-point entrustment scale was added to the standard ratings in an OSCE administered prior to students’ final clerkship year in an undergraduate medical programme. Standard OSCE ratings assess clinical and communication skills. Assessors (n = 54) rated students’ performance (n = 227) on a diverse set of clinical tasks and evaluated the addition of entrustment scales to OSCEs. Descriptive and inferential statistics were calculated for analyses. Results: Student performance varied across the stations, as reflected in both the standard OSCE ratings and the added entrustment ratings. Students received generally high standard OSCE ratings, whereas entrustment ratings were more widely distributed. All students passed the OSCE, and only a small proportion of students did not reach the expected pass threshold of 60% on the standard ratings in the single stations. The proportion of students who did not reach the expected entrustment level in the respective stations was noticeably higher. Both the clinical and communication skill ratings were related to the entrustment rating in most OSCE stations. A majority of the assessors positively evaluated the addition of entrustment ratings into the OSCE. Discussion: The findings provide an empirical basis to broaden our understanding of the potential use of entrustment ratings in existing OSCEs. They provide directions for future, more specific studies. The ratings might be used for formative feedback on students’ readiness for workplace practice

Unravelling the dynamics of online ratings

Online product ratings are an immensely important source of information for consumers and accordingly a strong driver of commerce. Nonetheless, interpreting a particular rating in context can be very challenging. Ratings show significant variation over time, so understanding the reasons behind that variation is important for consumers, platform designers, and product creators. In this paper we contribute a set of tools and results that help shed light on the complexity of ratings dynamics. We consider multiple item types across multiple ratings platforms, and use a interpretable model to decompose ratings in a manner that facilitates comprehensibility. We show that the various kinds of dynamics observed in online ratings are largely understandable as a product of the nature of the ratings platform, the characteristics of the user population, known trends in ratings behavior, and the influence of recommendation systems. Taken together, these results provide a framework for both quantifying and interpreting the factors that drive the dynamics of online ratings.Published versio

Credible ratings

This paper considers a model of a rating agency with multiple clients, in which each client has a separate market that forms a belief about the quality of the client after the agency issues a rating. When the clients are rated separately (individual rating), the credibility of a good rating in an inflationary equilibrium of the signaling game is limited by the incentive of the agency to exaggerate the quality of the client. In centralized rating, the agency rates all clients together and shares the rating information among all markets. This allows the agency to coordinate the ratings and achieve a higher average level of credibility for its good ratings than in individual rating. In decentralized rating, the ratings are again shared among all markets, but each client is rated by a self-interested rater of the agency with no access to the quality information of other clients. When the underlying qualities of the clients are correlated, decentralized rating leads to a smaller degree of rating inflation and hence a greater level of credibility than in individual rating. Comparing centralized rating with decentralized rating, we find that centralized rating dominates decentralized rating for the agency when the underlying qualities are weakly correlated, but the reverse holds when the qualities are strongly correlated.Signaling, credibility, individual rating, centralized rating, decentralized rating

Credible Ratings

This paper considers a model of a rating agency with multiple clients. ach client has a separate market (end-user of the rating); the only connection among them is that the underlying qualities of the clients are correlated. In the benchmark case of individual rating, the market for each client does not know the ratings for other clients. In centralized rating, the agency rates all clients together and shares the rating information among all markets. In decentralized rating, the ratings are again shared among all markets, but each client is rated by a self-interested rater of the agency with no access to the quality information of other clients. Both centralized rating and decentralized rating weakly dominate individual rating for the agency. When the underlying qualities are weakly correlated, centralized rating can dominate decentralized rating, but the reverse holds when the qualities are strongly correlated.

The extent and measurement of VCR time shifting : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Business Studies in Marketing at Massey University

The validity and accuracy of television programme ratings are critical to media planners and broadcasters alike. Media planners use ratings to select programmes that will satisfy certain reach and frequency objectives, which in turn contribute to an advertising campaign's overall goals. Broadcasters deliver audiences to advertisers, and base programme scheduling and pricing decisions on ratings data. At present, ratings are delivered within 24 hours of viewing and do not include adjustments for time shift viewing. Time shifting occurs when a television programme is videotaped and replayed at a later date. Given that VCR penetration in New Zealand has increased to over 75 percent of households, it is clear that programme ratings may be higher than the current overnight ratings suggest. This thesis explored the extent and measurement of time shifting in New Zealand. More specifically, it used AGB McNair's people meter data to examine: the scale of time shifting, the current methods of measuring time shifting, and future methods of estimating time shift viewing. The study aimed to identify whether patterns of time shifting behaviour exist, and whether these patterns could be used to model more inclusive overnight ratings. The findings suggest that, although the overall effect of time shifting on programme ratings is small, some programmes have very high levels of time shift viewing, prompting the need to include time shift viewing in the overnight ratings. The main constraint impeding the inclusion of VCR ratings in the overnight ratings is the difficulty in estimating time shift audiences overnight. This study proposed a number of methods of estimating VCR ratings overnight, including the recording level adjustment method, the same day playback adjustment method, and the genre/station correction method. While further research is required to compare the predictive ability of the methods, in the meantime implementing any of the methods is likely to provide more accurate overnight estimates of total audiences

Do firms engage in earnings management to improve credit ratings?: Evidence from KRX bond issuers

In this paper, we examine the relationship between credit ratings, credit ratings changes and earnings management. Since the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, many listed firms collapsed, leading investors to suffer losses. As a result, credit ratings have become a very important indicators of firms’ financial stability for investors, government agencies and debt issuers and other stakeholders. Firms with a similar credit rating are grouped together as firms of similar credit quality (Kisgen 2006) because credit ratings provide an ‘economically meaningful role’ (Boot et al. 2006). Numerous studies find that managers care deeply about their credit ratings (Graham and Harvey 2001; Kisgen 2009; Hovakimian at al. 2009). Firms that borrow equity in the form of bonds may have incentives to increase credit ratings with opportunistic earnings management. A change in a firm’s credit ratings has a direct impact on a firm’s profitability. Firm’s benefit from better terms from suppliers, enjoy better investment opportunities and have lower cost of capital when their credit risk is lower. Firms incur a higher cost of debt and experience additional costs when their credit risk is higher. American studies find that firms use earnings management to influence credit ratings (Ali and Zhang 2008; Jung et al. 2013; Alissa et al 2013). Credit rating agencies have stated they assume financial statements to be reasonable and accurate (Securities and Exchange Commission, 2003; Standard and Poor’s, 2006) and they do not consider themselves to be auditors. They take the information in the financial statements as accurate. Therefore, there is a potential for managers to engage in earnings management to influence credit ratings. In South Korea, there have been numerous experiments with auditor legislation because of financial collapses due to earnings management in the 2000s. Therefore, a decomposition of the relation between opportunistic earnings management and credit ratings is an important consideration for Korean accounting academia. Previous Korean studies have examined whether credit ratings in period t are significantly related to level of earnings management in the same period; however, those studies fail to find the consistent results. It is widely known that credit rating agencies allow one year credit watch period to assess default risk before credit rating decision. Firms with an incentive to increase their credit ratings through earnings management will only realize if earnings management positively influences credit ratings in the following year. Therefore, we focus on establishing a relationship between the levels of earnings management at time t and credit ratings / changes at time t+1. Our study provides a more robust analysis by establishing if both accrual based and real earnings management in period t influences credit ratings and credit rating changes in period t+1. Using a sample of 1,717 Korean KRX firm-years from 2002 to 2013, we find a negative relation between earnings management in period t and credit ratings in period t+1, suggesting that firms with higher credit ratings have lower levels of earnings management. Moreover, we find that firms that experience a credit ratings change in period t+1 are less likely to engage in opportunistic earnings management in period t, suggesting that firms do not have the potential to increase credit ratings. We also find that firms that experience a credit rating increase in period t+1 have a negative association with opportunistic earnings management for accruals measures. Moreover, when we split our sample into firms that experience 1) a credit rating increase, 2) decrease and 3) remaining the same, we find that firms that engage in earnings management are more likely to remain unchanged or experience a credit rating decrease. Thus, taken together, we find no evidence of relationship between opportunistic earnings management and an increase in credit ratings in the South Korean public debt market. Our results may be of interest to regulators, credit rating agencies, market participants and firms that question whether level of earnings management in current year influences credit ratings in the subsequent period

Rating assignments: Lessons from international banks

This paper estimates ordered logit and probit regression models for bank ratings which also include a country index to capture country-specific variation. The empirical findings provide support to the hypothesis that the individual international bank ratings assigned by Fitch Ratings are underpinned by fundamental quantitative financial analyses. Also, there is strong evidence of a country effect. Our model is shown to provide accurate predictions of bank ratings for the period prior to the 2007 – 2008 banking crisis based upon publicly available information. However, our results also suggest that quantitative models are not likely to be able to predict ratings with complete accuracy. Furthermore, we find that both quantitative models and rating agencies are likely to produce highly inaccurate predictions of ratings during periods of financial instability

Analysis of consumer preferences for information and expert opinion using a discrete choice experiment

We present a study of consumer preferences for information in wine purchases. Consumers are presented with extra information in the form of qualitative product descriptions and quantitative expert ratings. We implement a discrete choice exper- iment in which we vary experimentally the presence of the descriptions and ratings and the values of the ratings themselves. Respondents are asked to choose amongst a set of 5 wine bottles in a sequence of 21 choice scenarios. We find that the presence of extra information and high expert ratings have a significant impact on the will- ingness to pay for a given wine. The dispersion of ratings for a given wine does not affect respondents’ choices. In our estimates high average ratings by experts carry a premium of AUD $10.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio