Prior work experience in a relevant medical profession is an important admission criterion currently used at many German medical schools in addition to cognitive criteria. In other countries, work experience is often considered in later admission stages (e.g., interviews with pre-selected subgroups of applicants). However, evidence for its…

Students are often encouraged to learn 'deeply' by abstracting generalizable principles from course content rather than memorizing details. So widespread is this perspective that Likert-style inventories are now routinely administered to students to quantify how much a given course or curriculum evokes deep learning. The predictive validity of…

This paper has two objectives: (1) presenting recent advances in personality theory whereby personality traits are conceptualized within a framework that focuses on the dynamic interactions of behaviour, biology, context, and states, and (2) discussing the implications of these developments for measurement and medical selection. We start by…

Although there is extensive evidence confirming the predictive validity of situational judgement tests (SJTs) in medical education, there remains a shortage of evidence for their predictive validity for performance of postgraduate trainees in their first role in clinical practice. Moreover, to date few researchers have empirically examined the…

The current study examined the degree to which applicants applying for medical internships distort their responses to personality tests and assessed whether this response distortion led to reduced predictive validity. The applicant sample (n = 530) completed the NEO Personality Inventory whilst applying for one of 60 positions as first-year…

This study investigates the effects of socioeconomic status and schooling on the academic attainment of a cohort of students at a single medical school (N = 240). Partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to explore how students' summative assessment scores over 4 years of medical school were affected by: attainment in secondary…

Medical schools all over the world select applicants using non-cognitive and cognitive criteria. The predictive value of these different types of selection criteria has however never been investigated within the same curriculum while using a control group. We therefore set up a study that enabled us to compare the academic performance of three…

In a sequential OSCE which has been suggested to reduce testing costs, candidates take a short screening test and who fail the test, are asked to take the full OSCE. In order to introduce an effective and accurate sequential design, we developed a model for designing and evaluating screening OSCEs. Based on two datasets from a 10-station…

Typically, only a minority of applicants to health professional training are invited to interview. However, pre-interview measures of cognitive skills predict for national licensure scores (Gauer et al. in "Med Educ Online" 21 2016) and subsequently licensure scores predict for performance in practice (Tamblyn et al. in "JAMA"…

Aptitude tests are widely used in selection. However, despite certain advantages their use remains controversial. This paper aims to critically appraise five sources of evidence for the construct validity of the Health Professions Admission Test (HPAT)-Ireland, an aptitude test used for selecting undergraduate medical students. The objectives are…

Medical schools with a diverse student body face the challenge of ensuring that all students succeed academically. Many medical schools have implemented prematriculation programs to prepare students from diverse backgrounds; however, evidence on their impact is largely lacking. In this study, we analyzed participants' demographics as well as the…

Typically, only a minority of applicants to health professional training are invited to interview. However, pre-interview measures of cognitive skills predict for national licensure scores (Gauer et al. in "Med Educ Online" 21 2016) and subsequently licensure scores predict for performance in practice (Tamblyn et al. in "JAMA"…

Traditional methods of assessing personality traits in medical school selection have been heavily criticised. To address this at the point of selection, "non-cognitive" tests were included in the UK Clinical Aptitude Test, the most widely-used aptitude test in UK medical education (UKCAT: http://www.ukcat.ac.uk/). We examined the…

The Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) is a quantitative metric used by MD and MD-PhD programs to evaluate applicants for admission. This study assessed the validity of the MCAT in predicting training performance measures and career outcomes for MD-PhD students at a single institution. The study population consisted of 153 graduates of the…

Although problem-based learning (PBL) has been widely used in medical schools, few studies have attended to the assessment of PBL processes using validated instruments. This study examined reliability and validity for an instrument assessing PBL performance in four domains: Problem Solving, Use of Information, Group Process, and Professionalism.…