Association of admissions factors with student performance in preclinical operative dentistry.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVE: Admission to dental school is based on various factors including academic achievements in undergraduate coursework and the Dental Admission Test (DAT) scores. Students' success in an operative course requires fundamental knowledge, hand skills, spatial awareness, and self-assessment ability. The goal of this study is to evaluate how admissions factors, such as Grade Point Average (GPA) and DAT, including the Perceptual Ability Test (PAT), relate to students' academic and preclinical performance and self-assessment skills in preclinical operative dentistry. METHODS: A total of 239 students were included from seven class years (2016-2022). Third-year dental students participated in a preclinical operative dentistry course. At the end of the course, they took the final multiple-choice exam and performed four competency examination procedures: Class II amalgam preparation and restoration and Class III resin-composite preparation and restoration. Calibrated faculty graded students' work independently and students also self-assessed their performance using the same rubrics as faculty. Linear regressions were performed to estimate the association between the admission factors with the mean faculty scores (measuring preclinical performance), student-faculty (S-F) gap scores (evaluating self-assessment skills), and their final didactic exam scores. RESULTS: Overall, students' self-assessment was higher compared to faculty score. Linear regression analysis demonstrated positive correlations between the PAT and students' preclinical performance as well as between the DAT and their didactic exam scores. In general, S-F gap score decreased as PAT score increased, and it was statistically significant lower for the Class III preparation, indicating a better self-assessment skill. No correlations were observed between student performance and GPA scores. CONCLUSION: The findings from the association between student performance and admission factors may play an important role in the dental school admissions process and assist students who may benefit from early faculty intervention and support.

The effect of gender on student self-assessment skills in operative preclinical dentistry.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVE: Self-assessment is a fundamental skill for dentists and other health care providers. It enables these professionals' ability to critically evaluate the quality of their clinical work and improve through self-directed learning. Researchers have investigated how gender affects self-assessment skills and have shown that male students tend to overestimate their performance while female students tend to underestimate theirs as compared to peer or faculty assessment. The goal of this study was to evaluate how the self-assessment skills of dental students differ by gender in operative preclinical dentistry. METHODS: Third-year dental students (N = 208, Class of 2016-2021) self-assessed their work using the same rubrics as faculty on four operative dentistry competency examination procedures: Class II amalgam preparation and restoration and Class III resin-composite preparation and restoration. Two calibrated full-time faculty graded all procedures independently. The Student self-assessment-Faculty grade (S-F) gap scores were calculated and statistically analyzed. RESULTS: Overall, both genders overestimated their self-assessment for all four procedures as compared to actual scores given by faculty. Males overestimated more significantly than females for Class II Amalgam preparation, but not for the other three procedures. However, when the S-F gap for all procedures was combined and analyzed together, male students significantly overestimated their self-assessments compared to female students. When female and male students grading scores were stratified into quartiles, there were significantly larger differences between males and females in the lower quartiles, which suggest that difference in self-assessment abilities was more prominent among the lower performing students. CONCLUSION: The results of this study demonstrate that gender may affect the accuracy of self-assessment in operative preclinical dentistry.