Developing a Korean communication skills attitude scale: comparing attitudes between Korea and the West.

OBJECTIVES: We aimed to develop a Korean version of the Communication Skills Attitude Scale (CSAS) created by Rees et al. in order to elucidate the positive and negative aspects of Korean pre-medical and medical students' attitudes towards communication skills (CS) learning. METHODS: We performed two surveys. In the first of these, 325 pre-medical and medical students completed a translated version of the CSAS. In the second survey, 257 medical students and doctors-in-training answered five open-ended questions to obtain more qualitative data about their attitudes. Results Principal component analysis with direct oblimin rotation performed with the data from the first survey produced the following five factors: facilitation of interpersonal skills; doubts about the importance of CS learning in medicine; motivation; negative attitudes towards assessment, and overconfidence. RESULTS: from the second survey indicated that facilitation and importance within a medical context were two core attitudinal factors and suggested some modification to the CSAS to improve its fit for Korean pre-medical and medical students. CONCLUSIONS: Using a Korean version of the CSAS (CSAS-K), we determined five factors that revealed a somewhat complex attitude structure among students towards CS learning. The CSAS required some modification, possibly because CS teaching and learning in Korea are in the development stage. Finally, the educational implications of the results are discussed.

Relationships between Cognitive and Learning Styles of Premedical Students.

PURPOSE: We investigated the relationship between cognitive and learning style by comparing the Cognitive Styles Analysis (CSA) with the Index of Learning Styles (ILS). We assessed whether cognitive styles correlated with learning styles with regard to their corresponding dimensions. METHODS: One hundred two second-year premedical students participated, and data from ninety-four students were analyzed. One student's data file was lost during data collection, and six students were excluded because their correct response rates on the CSA were lower than 50%. Both scales were presented on a computer item by item, and the assessment was conducted in the computer lab as a group. For analysis, responses and reaction times were recorded. RESULTS: Distributions of the styles were generated. We correlated the verbal-imagery dimension of the CSA with the visual-verbal dimension of the ILS and found no correlation. There was no correlation between the wholist-analytic dimension of the CSA with the sequential-global dimension of the ILS. Excluding intermediate students in the verbal-imagery dimension of the CSA, however, there appeared to be a marginally significant correlation between the verbal-imagery dimension of the CSA and the visual-verbal dimension of the ILS. CONCLUSION: In the visual (imagery)-verbal dimension, there was some correlation between cognitive and learning styles.

Reconsidering the cut score of Korean National Medical Licensing Examination.

After briefly reviewing theories of standard setting we analyzed the problems of the current cut scores. Then, we reported the results of need assessment on the standard setting among medical educators and psychometricians. Analyses of the standard setting methods of developed countries were reported as well. Based on these findings, we suggested the Bookmark and the modified Angoff methods as alternative methods for setting standard. Possible problems and challenges were discussed when these methods were applied to the National Medical Licensing Examination.