Retaining self-determined goals and the impact on examination scores

To determine how many students retained their own goals during a 6-month radiology course and to evaluate the impact on the final examination scores.

At the beginning of the radiology course in 2003, all first-year military nursing students (N = 60) were asked to list their self-determined goals for learning radiology. After the 6-month course, they were asked to restate their initial self-determined goals, without previous notice. The replies were classified into three groups, as follows: group 1, those who did not restate their own goals accurately; group 2, those who restated their own goals accurately; group 3, those who stated, "I don't remember." The mean examination scores for the groups were compared by using Student's t test.

The mean score (mean +/- SD, 69.6 +/- 6.9) for students in group 3 was significantly higher than that (mean +/- SD, 61.8 +/- 5.8) for students in group 1 (p = 0.003). The mean score (mean +/- SD, 64.7 +/- 6.9) for group 2 was higher than that for group 1, but the difference was not statistically significant (p = 0.109).

Retaining self-determined goals has clear advantages in a military nursing school. However, those who are honest and report forgetting their self-determined goals do not always achieve poor results on the examination.