1. Student Evaluation: What Are the Perspectives of Medical Students on the Graduate Entry Program and Traditional Five Year Program and How Do They Influence Response Rates? By Katherine Stewart BSc, Dr Ann Griffin MB BS, FHEA, MMed Centre for Medical Education, Institute for Health Science Education http://www.ihse.qmul.ac.uk/cme//index.html Introduction Student evaluation is a crucial aspect of the quality assurance processes that take place in higher education. However, there is little literature exploring students’ perspectives and how this affects their involvement with the process. Students in our medical school are asked to complete online evaluations at the end of each module. Data previously collected within the medical school indicates that first year Graduate Entry Program (GEP) students have a higher response rate than students in the first year of the 5 year program (5YP). This study aims to find out what medical students think about student evaluation and to explore whether differing perspectives are the reason for the variation in response rates between the two cohorts. Methods This study used a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods. Two focus groups were carried out, one with each cohort. This allowed the students to discuss and clarify their views and enabled us to gain an in depth understanding of the students’ perspectives (Kitzinger, 1995). Questionnaires generated from these groups were distributed to both year groups, to demonstrate whether the results of the focus groups could be generalised. These consisted of ten yes/no questions. All participating students were asked several demographics questions in order to determine how representative of their cohort the focus groups were and to see if these effected the students perspectives on evaluation. Themes and subthemes were extracted from the focus groups using a framework analysis technique (Pope, 2000). Results Two main themes were taken from the focus groups, each covering several subthemes: 1.The students’ perspectives of the evaluations The content of the evaluations The format of the evaluations When the evaluations are carried out The anonymity of the evaluations 2.The students’ perspectives on the medical school’s response to the evaluations. The students’ perceptions on how the data should be used How well students believe data is currently used Student perceptions on the feedback they receive The results of the questionnaires suggested that most of the conclusions from the focus groups were representative of their student cohort. Conclusions Several key points can be taken from the results of this study: Students want the evaluations to be specific to individual teaching sessions so that those that are good can be reused, but those that are viewed by the students as poor can be removed from the module or improved for the next group of students. Students want evaluations to be quick and accessible. Students fill out evaluations when they are asking about something that they feel strongly about and when the students believe their responses will be acted upon by the university. GEP and 5YP students differ in their perspectives of certain aspects of student evaluation. GEP students are less concerned about the anonymity of their responses, but believe more strongly that the medical school needs to justify what it does with the responses. It is suggested that the reason students on the Graduate Entry Program have higher response rates is because of experience dealing with e-mail inboxes from previous employment and experience with completing student evaluations during their previous degrees. This study highlights the influence that the students’ perspectives have on their participation in student evaluation, and therefore the importance of them being understood so that student evaluation is a productive process. References Kitzinger, J. (1995) Qualitative Research: Introducing focus groups. British Medical Journal 311:299-302. Pope C, Ziebland S et al (2000) Qualitative Research in Healthcare: Analysing Qualitative Data. British Medical Journal 320:114-116