Representations of clinical reasoning in PBL meetings: The inquiry trace

Background: Barrows has recommended that a particular approach to inquiry be utilized within Problem-Based Learning (PBL). Purpose: We describe an observational technique designed to document the inquiry and theorizing activities of a PBL team working through a clinical problem. Methods: The Inquiry Trace is an analytic instrument that represents PBL group talk and captures the temporal quality of the clinical reasoning process. It consists of a list of diagnostic theories advanced by the group juxtaposed with the accumulating body of evidence pertaining to the case. Results: The resulting matrix is augmented with annotations describing other significant events that occur (e.g., the generation of a learning issue). Conclusions: Although what is recorded on the Inquiry Trace is not reasoning itself; it provides a temporal record of a sequence of observable events that mark the group's reasoning with respect to a case. It serves as a useful abstraction, therefore, for studying and understanding the reasoning process as it is enacted in the PBL meeting.