Associations Between the Big Five Personality Traits and a Medical School Admission Interview

INTRODUCTION: Personality has became popular in medical student's selection. However, few research exists about the association between the big five personality traits and the existent medical school selection tools. Our aim was to study which personality traits were selected by a medical school admission interview. MATERIAL AND METHODS: One hundred ninety four graduate applicants that had applied to the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto through the graduate entry approach, after ranked on previous achievement, were interviewed between the academic years of 2011 and 2013. From these, 181 (93.3%) answered to the NEO Five-Factor Inventory that assesses high order personality traits of openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. Admission interview corresponded to the second phase of the seriation process. Every applicant was interviewed and scored by three interviewers on seven dimensions asesssed by Lickert scale (1-10). Interview score was the sum of the dimensions. Linear mixed effects model and respective regression coefficients were used to estimate the association between personality traits from each interviewer's score. Final models were adjusted for gender, interviewers and previous achievement. RESULTS: Openness to experience (Beta = 0.18: CI 95%: 0.05; 0.30) had the strongest association with interview score followed by the interaction effect between the extraversion and conscientiousness traits (Beta = 0.14; CI 95%: 0.02; 0.25). Also, applicants scored higher when their gender was opposite to the interviewers. DISCUSSION: Previous achievement and interview score had no association. CONCLUSION: Our admission interview selected different personality traits when compared to other selection tools. Medical schools should be aware of the implications of the adopted selection tools on the admitted medical student's personality because it can help providing beneficial interventions

Self-concept and obsessive-compulsiveness as moderators of anxiety and depression: a Portuguese prospective study

Objective Research shows a high prevalence of psychopathology among medical students. This study aims to assess the time trend of depression, anxiety, self-concept and obsessive-compulsiveness in medical students within the first year (short-run) and over the years (long-run) of medical school, and to measure if self-concept and obsessive-compulsiveness predict anxiety and depression trends. Methods At baseline, 183 freshman students that enrolled at FMUP in the 2002/03 academic year were recruited; from these, 71 (39%) participated in the short-run study and were assessed at the beginning and at the end of the first year and 151 (83%) participated in the long-run study (assessed in the first, third and fifth year). Participants answered three self-report questionnaires: the Hospital Anxiety Depression Scale (HADS), the Maudsley Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory (MOCI) and a self-concept scale. Results In the long-run, there was a negative linear trend with time for the MOCI score (B=–0.68, p<0.001) and for the HADS anxiety score (B=–0.28, p<0.001), a positive linear trend for self-concept (B=1.37, p<0.001) and no association with depression (B=–0.05). The short-run results were opposite given that anxiety, depression and obsessive-compulsiveness increased and no differences were found for self-concept. After adjusting for self-concept and obsessive-compulsiveness, there was no effect of time on anxiety but there was a negative interaction between self-concept and time on depression scores. Conclusions: The effect of time on depression is moderated by a protective effect of self-concept, while obsessive-compulsiveness explained time trends on anxiety scores. It is important to understand and find the pathways of anxiety and depression to improve medical students’ mental health

Do item-writing flaws reduce examinations psychometric quality?

Background The psychometric characteristics of multiple-choice questions (MCQ) changed when taking into account their anatomical sites and the presence of item-writing flaws (IWF). The aim is to understand the impact of the anatomical sites and the presence of IWF in the psychometric qualities of the MCQ. Results 800 Clinical Anatomy MCQ from eight examinations were classified as standard or flawed items and according to one of the eight anatomical sites. An item was classified as flawed if it violated at least one of the principles of item writing. The difficulty and discrimination indices of each item were obtained. 55.8 % of the MCQ were flawed items. The anatomical site of the items explained 6.2 and 3.2 % of the difficulty and discrimination parameters and the IWF explained 2.8 and 0.8 %, respectively. Conclusions The impact of the IWF was heterogeneous, the Writing the Stem and Writing the Choices categories had a negative impact (higher difficulty and lower discrimination) while the other categories did not have any impact. The anatomical site effect was higher than IWF effect in the psychometric characteristics of the examination. When constructing MCQ, the focus should be in the topic/area of the items and only after in the presence of IWF.This work was supported by the IJUP Project under Grant Number PP_IJUP2011 67info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio