An advanced research seminar series for family medicine faculty members

Due to the need to improve research skills and levels of research productivity among family physician faculty, the authors conducted a needs analysis, then designed, implemented, and evaluated a ten-week course entitled "An Advanced Research Seminar." The course goals were to enable faculty to draft a research proposal and outline a paper describing their study. Although the eight participants highly approved of course goals and level of difficulty, and showed significant cognitive gains in a self-report retrospective pre/post evaluation, few were able to achieve course goals. This paper discusses the discrepancy between self-reported ability and actual accomplishment, and the circumstances which can lead to inflated self-assessments. The importance of performance measures is discussed.