Factors affecting performance of first year medical students in Bhopal, India

Abstract

Shubho Subrata Biswas, Vaishali Jain

There has been a rapid growth of private medical colleges with wide disparity in student performance. We tried to identify the weak performers and their difficulties early in the academic year. 57 male and 78 female 1st MBBS students appeared for a part completion test and answered a questionnaire on factors that may affect performance The marks scored by the students were compared in three categories of attendance (good, moderate and poor) and two categories of the other factors . There was significant difference in marks with respect to attendance (One way ANOVA. F statistic was 7.8 with p <0.01). Multiple group comparison showed there was significant difference only between students with good and poor attendance (p<0.01). 76.1% of the students with good, 71.4% of the students with moderate, but only 42.1% of the students with poor attendance could score more than 75% marks. (p<0.05). Two independent sample t test showed that categories scoring better marks were females (p<.01), younger age group (p<0.05), better preadmission caliber (p<0.05) and satisfactory English comprehension ( p<0.01). The odds ratio was highest for females over males, followed by those with better English comprehension, younger age and better pre-admission caliber. Females and younger age showed significant association with preadmission caliber. Multiple linear regression showed only female gender (p<0.001) and English comprehension to be significant predictors of performance (p<0.05). The difference in average marks of females compared to males was 3.023 and the difference in average marks of those with better to poorer English comprehension was 1.187. The study shows the changing social equation reflected by the superiority of female students. It emphasizes early identification of the difficulties of the weak performers.