While much debate has occurred over the use of simulation testing and medical education, no research has been done to provide insight into the benefits of simulation testing. The goal of this thesis was to develop a pair of programs to allow comparison of the different formats of a text-based and virtual patient simulation test as a first step toward researching this issue. The development of these programs is based on computer system development standards and utilized multimedia elements for the virtual patient simulator test from a multimedia Pediatrics database.