Factors influencing the academic performance of first-year medical students

Abstract

Introduction: during the last few years in the Faculty "Victoria de Girón" academic results in the subjects of basic cycle have shown a variable performance. There was not the expected correspondence between methodological work and academic results. Objective: to identify some factors that could influence the academic performance of first-year medical students. Methods: an observational cross-sectional study was performed, which consisted in the selection by stratified random sampling of 118 first-year medical students from the 2022 academic year of Faculty “Victoria de Girón”. A survey was applied to all students to obtain relevant information on socioeconomic and academic factors with a possible influence on academic performance. Every student was also requested to undergo the domino test which measures intellectual performance, as well as the Ten Wishes technique, the Rotter test, and the LEI (Youth Problems Inventory) to measure motivation and other personality traits. The statistical analysis consisted in the use of a classification and regression tree and association measures in double-entry contingency tables. To summarize academic performance by subjects, a position index was calculated. This index is a weighted and standardize mean, which allows for comparisons among subjects.Results: the importance of the pre-university ranking score, modulated by the student's sex variable, in academic prognosis, is highlighted. Neither the student's motivation, nor their IQ, but the weekly study hours reported by themselves, had a relevant association with academic results. The subjects with the worst results were OhS (Human ontogeny and Soma) with 44,1 % and SNER (Nervous, Endocrine and Reproductive Systems) 48,7 % of failures .Conclusions: The student's rank at admission is the variable that best predicts academic performance, albeit with different cut-off points for male and female students.