Selecting pharmacy students with appropriate communication skills

American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, Spring 2000 by Jones, Janet, Krass, Ines, Holder, Gerald M, Robinson, Rosalie A

A use of source material

B structure and development of the text

C control of academic style

D grammatical correctness.

Ratings ranged from one (poor) to four (excellent) where satisfactory or better ratings are three and four. Unsatisfactory MASUS ratings are taken to mean that a student's progress will be impeded or even delayed by his/her written communication skills.

The STAT is a general ability test used for tertiary admission in which half the questions measure verbal skills and half measure quantitative skills(19). The verbal items involve understanding, reasoning and critical thinking, while the quantitative items involve comprehension, application, decision making and problem solving. The STAT scores available for each student range from 100 to 200 for each part and for the total, together with a percentile rank for each. A score of 100 is awarded for a zero raw score and a score of 200 is awarded for a perfect raw score. The test is calibrated within a year and between years with a network of common items, and the perGentile ranks have remained very stable from year to year.

The weighted average mean score (WAM) for the first

year courses was statistically tested against the communication measures and the entry selection rank (TER). The WAM is scored as a percentage and is similar to the GPA in its interpretation. Data were investigated by standard exploratory data analysis and logistic regression was used to predict satisfactory versus unsatisfactory interview and MASUS outcomes from the STAT(21). The Mann-Whitney U test was used to evaluate differences in scores for the satisfactory versus unsatisfactory interviewees. Unless otherwise stated, the level of significance accepted was P

RESULTS

Significant correlations were obtained between the various measures of communication skills and the STAT-total score (Table I). Both the verbal and quantitative skills are combined in the STAT total. The interview ratings were positively correlated with three of the four MASUS criteria and with both the STAT verbal and STAT-total scores. The MASUS ratings also correlated positively with the STAT-verbal and STAT total scores. In contrast, the STAT quantitative score was not signif icantly correlated with the interview or the MASUS criteria apart from MASUS D, grammatical correctness. Correlations with the high school exit parameter, the TER, which is based on four to six subjects assessed in part by a state wide exam, were also examined as shown in Table II. Again, except for criterion D, the TER was unrelated to the interview or MASUS criteria.

From the interviews conducted (N=170), 14 percent of students were rated one or two and were deemed to have unsatisfactory oral communication skills. This was considerably lower than the percentage (33 percent) of students whose MASUS ratings included at least one unsatisfactory rating (one or two), and who were considered to need assistance with their written communication skills. Of these students, 13 (eight percent) were unsatisfactory in three or all of the four MASUS criteria.