Comparing ChatGPT and DeepSeek for Assessment of Multiple-Choice Questions in Orthopedic Medical Education: Cross-Sectional Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Multiple-choice questions (MCQs) are essential in medical education for assessing knowledge and clinical reasoning. Traditional MCQ development involves expert reviews and revisions, which can be time-consuming and subject to bias. Large language models (LLMs) have emerged as potential tools for evaluating MCQ accuracy and efficiency. However, direct comparisons of these models in orthopedic MCQ assessments are limited. Objective: This study compared the performance of ChatGPT and DeepSeek in terms of correctness, response time, and reliability when answering MCQs from an orthopedic examination for medical students. Methods: This cross-sectional study included 209 orthopedic MCQs from summative assessments during the 2023-2024 academic year. ChatGPT (including the "Reason" function) and DeepSeek (including the "DeepThink" function) were used to identify the correct answers. Correctness and response times were recorded and compared using a χ2 test and Mann-Whitney U test where appropriate. The two LLMs' reliability was assessed using the Cohen κ coefficient. The MCQs incorrectly answered by both models were reviewed by orthopedic faculty to identify ambiguities or content issues. Results: ChatGPT achieved a correctness rate of 80.38% (168/209), while DeepSeek achieved 74.2% (155/209; P=.04). ChatGPT's Reason function also outperformed DeepSeek's DeepThink function (177/209, 84.7% vs 168/209, 80.4%; P=.12). The average response time for ChatGPT was 10.40 (SD 13.29) seconds, significantly shorter than DeepSeek's 34.42 (SD 25.48) seconds (P<.001). Regarding reliability, ChatGPT demonstrated an almost perfect agreement (κ=0.81), whereas DeepSeek showed substantial agreement (κ=0.78). A completely false response was recorded in 7.7% (16/209) of responses for both models. Conclusions: ChatGPT outperformed DeepSeek in correctness and response time, demonstrating its efficiency in evaluating orthopedic MCQs. This high reliability suggests its potential for integration into medical assessments. However, our results indicate that some MCQs will require revisions by instructors to improve their clarity. Further studies are needed to evaluate the role of artificial intelligence in other disciplines and to validate other LLMs.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.031 | 0.073 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".