Does a high ranking mean success in the Situational Judgement Test?

Abstract

Background and purpose: The selection of medical students to the foundation programme has undergone several changes since its introduction in 2005, with the latest being the introduction of the Situational Judgement Test (SJT) in 2013. The SJT, a 2-hour exam that uses a multiple-choice format to assess an individual's judgement when presented with clinically related scenarios, now accounts for 50 per cent of the application process. The remaining 50 per cent is made up of the Educational Performance Measure (EPM) score, which includes the medical student's performance at medical school, allocated by points attributed according to decile ranking. Coming out of its pilot year, there is little research into the results of the SJT. This project aims to discover whether there is a correlation between high-performing students who succeeded at medical school (i.e. by decile ranking) and those who scored high in the SJT. This project aims to discover whether there is a correlation between high- performing students and those whoscored high in the SJT METHOD: A survey was circulated to fifth-year medical students across the UK applying to the foundation programme in 2013, and who had sat the pilot year of the SJT. Students were asked to enter numerical values for their EPM and SJT scores.

Results: A total of 239 students from 12 UK medical schools responded to the questionnaire. In addition to their EPM, academic and SJT scores, all participants provided data on gender, duration of course (i.e. 4 or 5 years) and whether or not additional resources were used for the SJT. There was no correlation between the SJT and the academic scores (Spearman's = 0.0458; probability of any relationship = 0.4865).