Statistical methods for the assessment of students knowledge as illustrated by the Introduction to Internal Medicine exam

Background: We wanted to develop substantial and statistical methodology for complex assessment of quality of teaching in internal medicine at a medical university. Our aim was also to check the connection between the results obtained during the midterm and final exam. Material and methods: We compared the results obtained by Polish (PD, n=235) and English Division (ED, n=81) students achieved during the midterm exam and multiple-choice final exam. The mean scores were calculated with t-Student test. For further evaluation Wilcoxon tests were used with the Bonferroni correction, The Stuart-Maxwell test was carried out to verify the hypothesis about correlations between results in the midterm and final exam. Results: The mean midterm exam score was 84.4% in PD and 72.6% in ED (p <0.0001) and mean final exam score was respectively 72.3% and 55.6% (p <0.0001). Good result of the final exam was obtained by 62% of students Conclusions: It is crucial to use appropriate tools to grade the quality of teaching. To evaluate that one should use advance statistical tests. The fact that ED students achieve less points on the exams might have several reasons such as the language barrier. Obtaining a good result during midterm exam does not guarantee passing the final exam.