Predictive validity of a Uniform Entrance Test for the health professionals

Objective: To investigate the predictive validity of Uniform Entrance Test for academic performance in the first two years in various health science degree programs. Methods: A retrospective analysis of admissions data and academic performance of students admitted in under-graduate programs of medicine, dentistry and pharmacy of three cohorts was taken. The independent and dependent variables were entry test scores and semester scores respectively. Spearman’s Correlation co-efficient was computed to determine the association between entrance test scores and semester scores for three groups. Results: Majority of the students were from the MBBS degree program (61%) with majority of female students (65%) in all three programs. In MBBS the highest correlation coefficient between entry test and semester scores was observed for semester one rs = 0.334 and lowest in semester four rs= 0.208. In BDS degree program both highest and lowest correlations were in semester one. In the Pharm-D degree program, a significant correlation was only seen in cohort 1 but not in the subsequent cohorts. Conclusion: The uniform entrance test has an incremental predictive validity for the MBBS and BDS programs as compared to Pharm-D. Better performance in the entrance test predicts higher semester scores and more likelihood of achieving higher scores in the first year as compared to the second year. How to cite this:Ali R, Ali SK, Afzal A. Predictive validity of a Uniform Entrance Test for the health professionals. Pak J Med Sci. 2019;35(2):330-336. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.35.2.334 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.