POSITION OVERVIEW
NBME invites applications for multiple full-time remote internship positions for the Summer of 2025. Over an 8-week period, interns will have the opportunity to collaborate with NBME staff and interact with fellow graduate students as they complete a research project. The expected deliverable is an internal research presentation. Specific projects for the summer of 2025 will be discussed with applicants as part of the interview process. Examples of recent summer internship projects are listed below.
The compensation we are offering for this position is $45 per hour, amounting to a total stipend of $12,600 for full-time interns (35 hours per week). Additionally, all interns are eligible to receive up to $1,000 to support their attendance at a conference. This is not conditional on presenting at the conference. Interested applicants may apply here: https://nbme.applicantpro.com/jobs/3562778
APPLICATION PROCESS
• The deadline for applications is Wednesday, January 31, 2025
• Applicants will be informed of final decisions by Friday, February 28, 2025.
• Applications that include a cover letter outlining relevant experience and specific research programs or topics of interest will be given priority. When writing your cover letter, please highlight your specific role on projects or when working with faculty. It can be difficult to infer this information from short CV entries. Please help us learn more about your skills and interests!
QUALIFICATIONS
• Active enrollment in a doctoral program in measurement, statistics, computer science, cognitive science, medical education, or related field.
• Completion of at least one year of your PhD program by Summer 2025.
• Experience or coursework in one or more of the following: statistics, measurement theory, natural language processing, data science, research design, IRT, and test development.
• Working knowledge of statistical software (e.g., R, Python, C#).
• Interns will be assigned to one or more mentors and must be able to work independently.
• Must be authorized to work in the US for any employer. If selected, F-1 holders will need to apply for Curricular Practical Training authorization through their school's international student office and have a social security number for payroll purposes.
• Must be eligible to work June 2-July 25, 2025. We are unable to shift the timeline of the internship program.
• Must not have any competing employment throughout the duration of the internship.
• Must be available between NBME core hours (10am-3pm Eastern Time).
RESPONSIBILITIES
Operational Research
This research supports NBME's current portfolio of assessments. Utilizing already defined capabilities and focusing on established constructs, this foundational programmatic research improves our existing measurement capabilities or gathers validity evidence for our assessments.
Previous Internship Project Examples:
• Modeling Item Revisit Behavior: The Hierarchical Speed Accuracy Revisit Model
• Using Process Data to Improve Examinee Ability Estimation Precision
• Evaluation of a Virtual Clinical Reasoning Performance Assessment • The Utility of Nonfunctioning Distractors for Credentialing Tests
• Modeling the Conditions That Influence Response Time and Performance
• Examining USMLE Step 1 Feature Usage: A Response Process Validity Study
• The Association between USMLE Step 2 CK Scores and Patient Mortality: A Validity Study
Innovation Research
This research expands NBME's capabilities to provide more insight into our assessments and examinee behavior. For example, NBME now has a dedicated natural language processing (NLP) team that has its own line of research and supports various other initiatives in Operational Research and Innovation Research. Other research in the capabilities category includes building user score reports or creating stand-alone web-based applications, such as with Shiny.
Previous Internship Project Examples:
• Automated Short Answer Question Scoring with Adversarial Training
• Automated Distractor Generation for Clinical MCQs
• Automatic Item Generation for Medical Assessment with Large Language Models: Challenges of Accuracy and Novelty
• Using NLP to Explore Item Language Patterns as Part of Test Bias and Test Validity
• Analysis of Clinical Reasoning Constructed Responses
• Automatic Enemy Item Detection Using Natural Language Processing: Latent Semantic Analysis
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statement
At NBME, we continue to innovate and improve how we fulfill the evolving needs of the healthcare community. This commitment starts and ends with the people at NBME. By recruiting and empowering talented individuals from various disciplines and backgrounds, which includes professionals with diverse life experiences, abilities, and perspectives, NBME can take a well-informed, robust approach to advancing medical education and assessment for years to come. We also continue to focus on ensuring that our DEI work is impactful and ingrained in everything we do, including with our staff, workplace culture, products and services, the Philadelphia community and the broader medical education landscape.
