Correlations Between the Scores of Tests Before and After Lectures and the Scores of the Student Total Evaluation at Graduation

Abstract

We gave tests to 6th year medical students before and after pregraduate lectures in neurosurgery in the 1997 and 1998 academic years and compared the scores with those of the student total evaluation at graduation (TSG). We also selected 10 students with high, middle, or low TSG scores and compared their TSG scores with those of tests before and after lectures. We found that TSG scores were more strongly correlated with the scores of the postlecture test than with the scores of prelecture tests in both 1997 and 1998. The scores of postlecture tests differed between students with high, middle, and low TSG scores (P<0.01), whereas scores of prelecture tests did not. In both 1997 and 1998, students with high TSG scores achieved higher scores on the postlecture test than on the prelecture test and students with low TSG scores achieved higher scores on the prelecture test than on the postlecture test. We conclude that the prelecture test increases the student's will to study and that the postlecture test can be used to evaluate a student's basic knowledge at the time of lectures.