Perception and level of satisfaction on subjective versus objective based summative evaluation among undergraduate students: A cross sectional study.

Introduction: Evaluation is vital in teaching-learning process. The present study aims to assess the perception and level of satisfaction on subjective versus objective based summative evaluation among medical and nursing students. Materials and Methods: The present study is a cross-sectional descriptive study and is conducted on 300 Medical and Nursing students studying at AIIMS Rishikesh. Participants were selected by using Nonprobability convenience sampling technique. The data was collected on perception and level of satisfaction on subjective versus objective based summative evaluation using selfadministered Likert scale. Results: The present study findings showed that majority (95%) of the participants perceived multiple choice questions (MCQ) gives better opportunity to prepare them for competitive exams and 77% of participants perceived that essay based summative evaluation improves writing skills. Further, 97.3% participants were satisfied with MCQ based summative evaluation. Almost 90% recommended MCQ based exams to assess academic performance, whereas only 17% participants recommended subjective exams. Conclusion: The present research study showed that students have both positive and negative perception towards objective and subjective based summative evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]