What are the factors affecting the examinee in passing/failing the examination
Answers
Answer:
Various factors affect a person’s test results. In evaluating individual achievement, one cannot overlook personal traits and the influence of the groups to which a person belongs. The influence that such factors have on a student’s achievement is a research subject in itself or a variable that needs to be controlled in comparing the performance between groups. Interest in academic achievement can go beyond general results, such as means and deviations, and develop into more specific questions, such as the following: Do male or female students have higher academic performance?; What examinees’ traits are associated with higher test scores? It aims to explore how much influence the variables of individuals or groups such as examinees’ gender, age, graduation status, location of medical school, and test result (pass or fail) have on test score, the relative influence of variables, and the inter-group differences of test score of the Korean Medical Licensing Examination (KMLE) from 2011 to 2013.
METHODS
Subjects and materials
The target of this study was the test results of three consecutive year Korean Medical Licensing Examination from 2011 to 2013. The number of examinees for each examination was 3,364 in 2011, 3,177 in 2012, and 3,287 in 2013. KMLE is taken by expected medical school graduates, medical school graduates who failed previous examinations, and those who graduated from overseas institutions. Therefore, the data used in this study are not the findings from several medical schools or estimated data based on sampling but whole data for three consecutive years.
Five characteristics of examinees were set as variables: gender, age, graduation status, written test result (pass or fail), and city of medical school. The gender was divided into male and female; the age was divided into 5 age groups (people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s); graduation status was divided into expected graduates and graduates; written test result was divided into a group who passed and a group who failed. With regard to the city of origin, medical schools were divided by location: in South Korea or in other countries. The medical schools in South Korea were divided into two groups: schools in metropolitan cities (including Seoul) and schools in non-metropolitan cities.
Analysis method
A regression model was established, with the score of a written test as a dependent variable and with examinees’ traits as variables. The total score of all variables was analyzed with regression analysis to determine how the variables affected the written test scores in KMLE. For the analysis, IBM SPSS ver. 20.0 (IBM Co., Armonk, NY, USA) was used. The following is the regression model with the total score as a dependent variable and five factors as independent variables.
Y=B1X1+B2X2+B3X3+B4X4+B5X5+e
Y: Total score
X1: Gender, 0=female 1=male
X2: Age, 0~4=20’s~60’s
X3: Graduation Status, 0=expected graduates 1=graduates
X4: Testing Result, 0=failed 1=passed
X5: City of Origin, 0~2=overseas~metropolitan cities in South Korea
e: Residual
The total score from the 2011 KMLE was 450 points whereas the total scores from the 2012, 2013 examinations were 400 points each. Therefore, the score from the 2011 examination in the descriptive statistics was converted to 400 points. Because the score conversion does not affect the regression analysis, the explanatory power of the regression model or the significance test result is the same as that of the unconverted score. Converted score of the 2011 examination regression co-efficient can be compared with the results of the 2012 and the 2013 examinations.