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Over the past two decades, many studies have examined the relationship between perfectionism and academic achievement. However, these studies have yet to be systematically collated and meta-analysed. The purpose of the present study was to do so. A literature search returned 37 studies (N=8901) and 156 effect sizes. Random-effects meta-analyses indicated that perfectionistic strivings showed a significant small to medium positive relationship with academic achievement (r⁺ = .24), whereas perfectionistic concerns showed a significant small negative relationship with academic achievement (r⁺ =-.08). One moderator of these relationships was the instrument that was used to measure perfectionism. This was particularly the case for perfectionistic concerns. The findings suggest that the relationship between perfectionism and academic achievement is complex with perfectionistic strivings potentially aiding and perfectionistic concerns potentially hindering students' academic achievement.

This discussion paper argues that both the use of Cronbach’s alpha as a reliability estimate and as a measure of internal consistency suffer from major problems. First, alpha always has a value, which cannot be equal to the test score’s reliability given the interitem covariance matrix and the usual assumptions about measurement error. Second, in practice, alpha is used more often as a measure of the test’s internal consistency than as an estimate of reliability. However, it can be shown easily that alpha is unrelated to the internal structure of the test. It is further discussed that statistics based on a single test administration do not convey much information about the accuracy of individuals’ test performance. The paper ends with a list of conclusions about the usefulness of alpha.

Approximately 65% of the worldwide adult population has experienced stress, affecting their daily routine at least once in the past year. Stress becomes harmful when it occurs for too long or is continuous (i.e., chronic), interfering with our performance, attention, and concentration. Chronic high stress contributes to major health issues such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, and anxiety. Several researchers have focused on detecting stress through combining many features with machine/deep learning models. Despite these efforts, our community has not agreed on the number of features to identify stress conditions using wearable devices. In addition, most of the reported studies have been focused on person-specific training and testing. Thanks to our community’s broad acceptance of wearable wristband devices, this work investigates a global stress detection model combining eight HRV features with a random forest (RF) algorithm. Whereas the model’s performance is evaluated for each individual, the training of the RF model contains instances of all subjects (i.e., global training). We have validated the proposed global stress model using two open-access databases (the WESAD and SWELL databases) and their combination. The eight HRV features with the highest classifying power are selected using the minimum redundancy maximum relevance (mRMR) method, reducing the training time of the global stress platform. The proposed global stress monitoring model identifies person-specific stress events with an accuracy higher than 99% after a global training framework. Future work should be focused on testing this global stress monitoring framework in real-world applications.

This position paper builds on three of our earlier publications on the same subject (Jenkins & Leung 2014; Leung, Lewkowicz & Jenkins 2016; Jenkins & Leung 2017), as well as a number of conference papers we have given both jointly and individually. However, what we have not done up to this point is to propose alternatives to the large-scale standardized English tests administered by the major international examination boards, of which we have been so critical, despite the fact that we have been discussing other possibilities among ourselves for several years. The opportunity to publish a position paper on English language assessment therefore provided an ideal opportunity to present our alternatives, and this we do in the final part of the paper.

Institution-level wastewater-based surveillance was implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic, including in carceral facilities. We examined the relationship between COVID-19 diagnostic test results of residents in a jail in Atlanta, Georgia, USA (average population ≈2,700), and quantitative reverse transcription PCR signal for SARS-CoV-2 in weekly wastewater samples collected during October 2021‒May 2022. The jail offered residents rapid antigen testing at entry and periodic mass screenings by reverse transcription PCR of self-collected nasal swab specimens. We aggregated individual test data, calculated the Spearman correlation coefficient, and performed logistic regression to examine the relationship between strength of SARS-CoV-2 PCR signal (cycle threshold value) in wastewater and percentage of jail population that tested positive for COVID-19. Of 13,745 nasal specimens collected, 3.9% were COVID-positive (range 0%-29.5% per week). We observed a strong inverse correlation between diagnostic test positivity and cycle threshold value (r = -0.67; p<0.01). Wastewater-based surveillance represents an effective strategy for jailwide surveillance of COVID-19.

Functional Movement Screen (FMS) scores of ≤14 have been used to predict injury in athletic populations. Movement asymmetries and poor-quality movement patterns in other functional tests have been shown to predict musculoskeletal injury (MSI). Therefore, movement asymmetry or poor-quality movement patterns on the FMS may have more utility in predicting MSI than the composite score.Context: To determine if an asymmetry or score of 1 on an individual FMS test would predict MSI in collegiate athletes.Objective: Cohort study.Design: National Collegiate Athletic Association Division II university athletic program.Setting: A total of 84 Division II rowers, volleyball players, and soccer players (men: n = 20, age = 20.4 ± 1.3 years, height = 1.77 ± 0.04 m, mass = 73.5 ± 4.8 kg; women: n = 64, age = 19.1 ± 1.2 years, height = 1.69 ± 0.09 m, mass = 64.8 ± 9.4 kg).Patients or Other Participants: The FMS was administered during preseason preparticipation examinations. Injury-incidence data were tracked for an academic year by each team's certified athletic trainer via computer software. An MSI was defined as physical damage to the body secondary to athletic activity or an event for which the athlete sought medical care, and resulted in modified training or required protective splitting or taping. Composite FMS scores were categorized as low (≤14) or high (>14). Pearson χ 2 analyses were used to determine if MSI could be predicted by the composite FMS score or an asymmetry or score of 1 on an individual FMS test ( P < .05 ) .Main Outcome Measure(s): Athletes with FMS scores of ≤14 were not more likely to sustain an injury than those with higher scores (relative risk = 0.68, 95% confidence interval = 0.39, 1.19; P = .15). However, athletes with an asymmetry or individual score of 1 were 2.73 times more likely to sustain an injury than those without (relative risk = 2.73, 95% confidence interval = 1.36, 5.4; P = .001).Results: Asymmetry or a low FMS individual test score was a better predictor of MSI than the composite FMS score.Conclusions:

Background Clinical reasoning skills are essential competencies for medical students; therefore, effective, evidence-informed teaching methodologies are needed worldwide. This study investigated the benefits of team-based learning (TBL) for developing the skills in medical students. Method A mixed-methods sequential explanatory design was used to investigate the effectiveness of TBL for medical students acquiring clinical reasoning skills. The study participants comprised 92 fourth-year medical students at Yokohama City University School of Medicine, participating in TBL sessions that covered 10 major clinical symptoms identified in the core curriculum. Each session lasted 240 min. Before and after the educational intervention, student performance was measured using the script concordance test (SCT) on a 30-point scale, and self-assessed clinical reasoning competency was measured on a 7-point Likert scale. The SCT included pre-tests and post-tests of 30 questions each, with students randomly assigned to one of two test sets. Following the quantitative evaluation, a qualitative content analysis was conducted to explore the advantages of TBL for learning clinical reasoning skills. The analytic categories were set according to the six levels of Fink’s taxonomy of significant learning. Result Student performance improved significantly after the educational intervention (A test: 16.5 ± 4.4 to 18.7 ± 4.5, p  = 0.019; B test: 18.1 ± 3.7 to 19.8 ± 4.4, p  = 0.028). After the educational intervention, self-assessed clinical reasoning competency was significantly higher in “recalling appropriate physical examination and tests on clinical hypothesis generation,” “recalling appropriate differential diagnosis from patient’s chief complaint,” “verbalizing points that fit/don’t fit the recalled differential diagnosis appropriately,” “verbalizing and reflecting appropriately on own mistakes,” “selecting keywords from the whole aspect of the patient,” and “practicing the appropriate clinical reasoning process” (all p  < 0.001). The content analysis extracted 23 subcategories and 233 codes of the advantages of TBL for learning clinical reasoning skills, covering all six levels of Fink’s taxonomy of significant learning: Foundational knowledge (7 codes); Application (40 codes); Integration (69 codes); Human dimension (89 codes); Caring (8 codes); and Learning how to learn (20 codes). Conclusion This study demonstrates that TBL supports the acquisition of critical clinical reasoning skills among medical students.

The last two decades have witnessed a growing interest in the theoretical understanding of test fairness and the intricacies of the concept have led to a heated discussion about its main characteristics, on the one hand, and have called for its reconceptualization on the other hand. As a partial address of the call, this study intended to advance a measurement and structural model of the test fairness concept in the Iranian educational context. A 118-item questionnaire comprising 12 subscales was developed, pilot-tested, and then administered to 600 participants. The reliability indices of the subscales ranged from .87 to .97, and as for the full scale, Cronbach’s Alpha measure of internal consistency turned out to be .98. A set of Exploratory and Confirmatory Factorial Analyses were used to explore the interrelationships among the set of variables and to gauge the construct validity of the scales, with convergent and discriminant validity being ensured. A resulting model with a general higher-order factor (i.e., test fairness) and twelve lower-order factors of validity, construction and structure, administration, scoring, reporting, decision-making, consequences, security, explicitness, accountability, equality, and rights demonstrated the best fit, with the final solution explaining a total of 73.3 percent of the variance. The verified interplay between test fairness and the identified related factors confirmed fairness as a broad concept inclusive of test use validity. This finding entails that fairness as an all-encompassing and broad multi-disciplinary concept (Sen, A. (2009). The idea of justice. Harvard University Press.) might not be confined only to the testing context as is the case with validity. This idea in turn strengthens the idea that validity might possibly be incapable of justifying all intricacies of fairness in general and test fairness in particular.

Introduction Criterion-referenced standard setting methods establish passing scores based on predefined competency levels. The credibility of these scores must be supported by validity evidence. This study evaluated the reproducibility of modified Angoff and Ebel standards across different test formats and panels in dental assessments. Inter-rater reliability for each method was also assessed. Methods Twelve judges, selected via purposive sampling, were divided into two equal groups representing various specialisms. Each panel applied modified Angoff and Ebel methods to set standards for one-best answer (OBA) and short answer question (SAQ) items. Method replicability across panels was assessed using the Mann–Whitney U-test to compare passing scores between Groups A and B. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test compared passing scores between modified Angoff and Ebel within groups. Inter-rater reliability was estimated using the intraclass correlation coefficient for modified Angoff and Fleiss’ kappa for Ebel. Statistical analysis was conducted using IBM SPSS, with significance set at p  < 0.05. Results The median (IQR) years of teaching experience were 14.0 (17.0) for Group A judges and 21.5 (18.0) for Group B judges. In Group A, median (IQR) passing scores using modified Angoff were 49.75 (3.31) for OBA and 51.75 (6.13) for SAQ, with statistical no significant differences ( p  > 0.05) from Ebel OBA 47.38 (2.02), SAQ 49.50 (5.38). In Group B, modified Angoff passing scores were significantly higher than Ebel ( p  < 0.05): modified Angoff OBA 66.12 (3.31), SAQ 58.00 (7.50); Ebel OBA 55.92 (2.73), SAQ 49.50 (8.25). Passing scores were consistent across panels for SAQ but not for OBA. Inter-rater agreement, intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) and Fleiss’ kappa were higher in Group A across both methods. Conclusion Reproducibility of modified Angoff and Ebel standards across panels was mixed. Passing scores were consistent across judges for SAQ but varied for OBA in both methods. Group A showed consistency between modified Angoff and Ebel standards, whereas Group B had differing passing scores between both standards. These findings should be carefully considered when establishing defensible and reliable passing standards for dental knowledge assessments.

Background Retention of basic science knowledge is essential for effective clinical reasoning and decision-making in medical education. However, many students face difficulties applying this foundational knowledge during their clinical years. Objective To determine the level of retained basic science knowledge among undergraduate medical students. Methodology A cross sectional-single institutional-based study was conducted among medical students of two different batches in the University of Kassala, Sudan, during the academic period spanning 2021 to 2022. Thirty-six single answer questions were used for data collection. The data were entered and analyzed using SPSS version 25. Results Out of 185 invited students, 164 completed the exam questions yielding 88.65% response rate. Students’ test scores ranged from 19.44% to 88.89%, with an overall average of 57.49 ± 14.60. Notably, 32 students (19.51%) scored ≤ 47%. The average scores between the two student batches were nearly identical (57.67% ± 14.82 and 57.32% ± 14.47), suggesting consistency in performance across batches. Analysis across subject areas revealed that integrated questions consistently produced the highest mean scores in both batches (64.66 ± 19.68 and 62.35 ± 21.07 respectively). Overall, integrated questions had the highest average score at 63.55 ± 20.39, followed by Physiology (60.37 ± 19.31) and Biochemistry (55.22 ± 16.49) while Anatomy recorded the lowest average score (50.81 ± 18.46). Conclusion This study indicates that how well the undergraduate medical students gaining better retention of basic medical sciences knowledge when it is clinically oriented.