The testing of knowledge from physics in 1st year for medical studium in the Czech Republic - practical use of methodology analysis of results
Abstract
Teaching staff of Biophysics in medical schools in the Czech Republic has organized in the second academic year the full-time surveys of secondary school knowledge in first year students. The challenge is to map out a comprehensive and specific knowledge of students within eight thematic areas (optics , electricity, heat , acoustics, radioactivity , magnetism , pressure and physical quantities).
Testing took place in the school year 2012/13 at the first and third Faculty of Medicine, Charles University in Prague, at Plzen and at Masaryk University in Brno; methodically improved version of questionnaire was used in 2013 /14 also at the Medical Faculty of Ostrava and at 2nd Medical School, Charles University in Prague. The test consists of 30 (this year) or 32, respectively, single response questions with all answers prompted.
Part of the test are also basic geo demografic characteristics of the students used as screening for subsequent differentiation ANOVA analysis of found knowledge. In addition to the standard classification, we performed an analysis of set of questions / test items/ through Cronbach's alpha (CA) and several IRT (Item Response Theory) models.
The best summary of the results in the year 2012/13 was achieved at MU Brno (average 19.0 correct answers) , followed by a third LF UK (18.0), 1 LF UK (17.2) and LF UK Plzeň (16.8). Generally better results were achieved by eight-year or four-year grammar schools (18.3 or 17.6) compared to graduates of other schools (15.2), higher knowledge of basic physics had men (19.4) than women (17.1).
The main conclusions were confirmed in the academic year 2013/14, where we have used the "improved" version of the test, taking into account the results of the analysis of reliability battery of 30 questions and IRT models made by BioStat department at UBI first LF UK in the previous year.