Student perceptions about the occurrence of critical incidents in tutorial groups

The study reported here examines student perceptions about the occurrence of critical incidents in tutorial groups across years of medical training. The study investigates the following research questions. (1) Which factors underlie the occurrence of critical incidents in the tutorial group? (2) How do students rate the incidents with respect to whether they occur in the tutorial groups? (3) Are there differences in scores on the factors identified across years of medical training? The subjects consisted of a stratified random sample of 200 students at the Medical School of the University of Maastricht. In general, the results of the confirmatory factor analyses indicate that a six-factor model showed a good fit. The results show that students frequently perceive lack of elaboration, lack of interaction and unequal participation in tutorial groups. For most of the factors (lack of elaboration, difficult personalities, lack of cohesion, and lack of motivation) the average scores differ significantly (p<0.01) across the years.