Association between outcomes of Sixth-year Medical Students’ Self-assessments of Modified Essay Question Examination Compared with Outcomes of Modified Essay Question Examination: Faculty of Medicine Vajira Hospital, Navamindradhiraj University

Abstract

Objective: To assess the correlation of self-assessment of modified essay question (MEQ) and the actual scores in the sixth-year medical students.
Methods: Retrospective study in sixth-year medical students who were attended in MEQ examination and graduated in academic year 2014. Results of self-assessment after finishing MEQ and their actual scores were collected to analyze those correlations. Additionally, gender and Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) from first to sixth year of each student was also considered.
Results: Mean age of 82 sixth-year medical students was 24.9+ 3.2 years. There were 51.2% of male and 48.8% of female. Mean CGPA from first to sixth year was 3.2 + 0.3 (range 2.4-3.8). There were 6.1% of students who did not achieve the examination, and 93.9% of students were accomplished. The correlation coefficient (r) between self-assessment of medical students and their actual sores was 0.23 (p-value = 0.03). Students who overestimated themselves were male and more than female, as 16.7% compared with 5.0% (p-value = 0.24), respectively. CGPA of students who overestimated was 2.9+0.3 compared with 3.2+0.3 of students who underestimated or assessing correlated with their examinations (p-value = 0.01).
Conclusion: There are modest degree of correlations between self-assessment of MEQ examination scores and their actual scores in the sixth-year medical students. The affected factor of these correlations is CGPA, whereas male has a potential to overestimate themselves.