Student Self-Assessment Skills and Gender in the United States, Egypt and Japan: An Observational Study in Preclinical Dentistry

Introduction

This observational study seeks to investigate student self-assessment skills in the United States, Egypt and Japan and to elucidate gender's impact on the self-assessment abilities of students from various cultural backgrounds.

Methods

Dental students from the United States (n = 350), Egypt (n = 335) and Japan (n = 301) completed various preclinical exercises. In the United States, students took preclinical practical exams in Class II amalgam preparation and restoration and Class III resin-composite preparation and restoration. Students in Egypt completed a Class II resin-composite preparation and restoration, and those in Japan prepared a full metal crown. Students self-assessed their work, faculty evaluated it, and a student-faculty (S-F) gap was calculated to understand self-assessment accuracy.

Results

Dental students in all three countries overestimated their performance (United States: 9.0% ± 7.9%; Egypt: 11.4% ± 9.9%; Japan: 2.9% ± 10.5%). Japanese dental students' self-assessment aligned most with the faculty graders. Students in the bottom quartile had significantly larger S-F gaps, while those in the top quartile had significantly smaller S-F gaps. Comparing male and female students, no significant difference in self-assessment scores was found, but there was a significant difference between genders in both faculty grades and S-F gaps in the Egyptian cohort.

Conclusion

Generally, students exhibited a consistent positive bias when self-assessing, with lower performing students being less accurate self-assessors. Self-assessment scores, when stratified by gender, did not significantly differ across the three countries. The results from our study underscore the importance of providing dental students with more consistent exposure to self-assessment practices throughout their education to increase the alignment of student expectations with faculty standards.