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Predictive validity of the Undergraduate Medicine and Health Sciences Admission Test for medical students’ academic performance
Author(s) -
Wilkinson David,
Zhang Jianzhen,
Parker Malcolm
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
medical journal of australia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.904
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1326-5377
pISSN - 0025-729X
DOI - 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2011.tb03002.x
Subject(s) - entrance exam , medicine , test (biology) , predictive validity , correlation , multivariate analysis , clinical psychology , mathematics , paleontology , geometry , biology
Objective: To determine the predictive validity of the Undergraduate Medicine and Health Sciences Admission Test (UMAT) for academic performance at university. Design, setting and participants: We studied all 339 students who entered medical study at the School of Medicine, University of Queensland, directly from high school, between 2005 and 2009. Main outcome measures: UMAT scores before entry compared with grade point averages (GPAs) during university study. Results: Mean overall UMAT score at entry was 60/100 and mean GPA during university study was 6.1 (range, 1–7), with a correlation coefficient of 0.15 ( P = 0.005). This relationship existed only in the first year of university study. For UMAT Section 1 score, the correlation coefficient was 0.14 ( P = 0.01); for UMAT Section 2, the correlation coefficient was 0.06 ( P = 0.29); and for UMAT Section 3, the correlation coefficient was 0.09 ( P = 0.11). UMAT overall score for men (60.2) and women (59.8), and GPA for men (6.1) and women (6.2) were similar. However, men performed better in Section 1 (mean score 61.6 v 61; P = 0.05) and Section 3 (63.2 v 60.7; P < 0.001), whereas women performed better in Section 2 (58.5 v 55.8; P = 0.009). In multivariate analysis, only correlation between GPA and UMAT Section 1 score remained significant but was weak and lasted for 1 year of university study. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that UMAT has limited predictive validity for academic performance.