The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM) Curriculum SCOPE Survey, first administered in 2023, is a national questionnaire administered by the AAMC. It collects medical education program data regarding curriculum structure, content, organization, process, and evaluation.
Data from the Curriculum SCOPE Survey supports the AAMC and AACOM missions and advocacy work, informs medical school strategic plans and evidence-based curriculum decisions, and facilitates scholarship and dissemination.
Survey opens: September 5, 2024
Survey closes: December 5, 2024
The Curriculum SCOPE Survey has been reviewed by the American Institutes for Research Institutional Review Board.
Stay Connected
Contact curriculum@aamc.org to ensure your school contacts are up to date to receive the survey invitation and latest news.
Curriculum Virtual Community
Keep up with discussions, samples, and events related to curriculum including the Curriculum SCOPE Survey, including informational session recordings regarding data and reports as well as preparing to complete the survey, templates, a glossary, and more.
Resources
Frequently Asked Questions (PDF)
Most common questions and answers regarding the Curriculum SCOPE Survey are available here. If your question is not listed in the FAQs, please contact curriculum@aamc.org.
Curriculum Committee
The Curriculum Committee includes a sub-group that provides feedback and advises as to survey content and data use of the Curriculum SCOPE Survey.
Suggestion Box
Questions on the Curriculum SCOPE Survey change over time to meet ever-evolving needs of schools and the AAMC and AACOM missions. Proposed topics and questions are considered in light of priorities and with advisement from the Curriculum Committee. If you have suggested topics or questions for a future iteration of the Curriculum SCOPE Survey, we welcome your feedback.
Reports
The reporting strategy aims to support medical schools’ evidence-based evaluation and curriculum change, as well as support AAMC and AACOM mission and advocacy efforts on behalf of medical education programs. To meet that aim, participating medical schools are provided with:
- Custom visual benchmarking
- National aggregate statistics
- Analyzable de-identified data
The first edition of 2022-2023 individual medical school reports were released to curriculum deans in June and updated in July 2024. For more information about reports’ access, format, and content, please view this informational session recording and the SCOPE FAQs.
The reporting strategy is grounded in an iterative development and feedback process so data can be shared more swiftly, and future report editions consider user feedback. Given that this data collection is new, and the amount of data available is significant, data to be included in the initial editions of medical school reports was prioritized with external MD and DO input through our Curriculum Committee, as well as AAMC and AACOM perspectives.
Background
In 2022, the AAMC launched an effort to review curriculum data collections. The aims of the review were to ensure that the technical and staffing resources required were not unduly burdensome, that medical schools had equitable access to participation, and that data was consistently reported and utilized.
As announced in October 2022, the result of this review was the decision to consolidate data collections, including the Curriculum Inventory, the New, Emerging, and Evolving Demands (NEEDS) Survey, as well as some items from the Regional Medical Campus Survey and Simulation Inventory Survey. In collaboration with AACOM, the curriculum portion of the AACOM Annual Survey was also reviewed.
After this review, potential survey items were reduced through a prioritization exercise, leading to an overall reduction, such that the institutional burden in providing data to the AAMC is significantly less. The nimble operational approach and rigorous survey design has ensured that data are necessary to complete the work of medical schools, of reliable and high quality, and can adjust as curriculum continues to evolve.