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Comparison of graduate‐entry and direct school leaver student performance on an applied dental knowledge test
Author(s) -
Ali K.,
Zahra D.,
Tredwin C.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
european journal of dental education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.583
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1600-0579
pISSN - 1396-5883
DOI - 10.1111/eje.12232
Subject(s) - medical education , graduate students , test (biology) , medicine , duration (music) , repeated measures design , significant difference , academic year , cohort , psychology , analysis of variance , mathematics education , biology , statistics , mathematics , physics , paleontology , acoustics
Abstract Aims To compare the academic performance of graduate‐entry and direct school leavers in an undergraduate dental programme. Methods This study examined the results of students in applied dental knowledge ( ADK ) progress tests conducted during two academic years. A mixed model analysis of variance ( ANOVA ) was conducted to compare the performance of graduate‐entry and direct school leavers. ADK was treated as a repeated measures variable, and the outcome variable of interest was percentage score on the ADK . Results The results show statistically significant main effects for ADK [ F (1,113) = 61.58, P < 0.001, η 2 p = 0.35], Cohort [ F (1,113) = 88.57, P < 0.001, η 2 p = 0.44] and Entry [ F (1,113) = 11.31, P = 0.001, η 2 p = 0.09]. That is, students do better on each subsequent test (main effect of ADK ), students in later years of the programme perform better than those in earlier years (main effect of cohort), and graduate‐entry students outperform direct school leavers. Conclusions This is the first study to explore the differences in the academic performance of graduate‐entry and direct school leavers in an undergraduate dental programme. The results show that the academic performance of graduate students was better than the direct school leavers in years 2 and 3. Further research is required to compare the performance of students longitudinally across the entire duration of undergraduate dental programmes and evaluate whether this difference persists throughout.