Selection tools and student diversity in health professions education: a multi-site study

Area of Science:

• Health Professions Education
• Educational Psychology
• Sociology of Education

Background:

• Student diversity in health professions education (HPE) is influenced by selection processes.
• Limited understanding exists on how diverse selection tools affect applicant diversity across different HPE programs.
• This study investigates the impact of selection procedures on applicant subgroups in Dutch HPE programs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the selection chances of various applicant subgroups (gender, migration background, education) in HPE programs.
• To analyze the performance of these subgroups on different selection tools.
• To identify disparities and variations in selection outcomes and tool effectiveness.

Main Methods:

• Multi-site study involving 1935 applicants to five Dutch HPE undergraduate programs.
• Multilevel logistic regression to estimate subgroup selection probabilities.
• Multilevel linear regression to analyze performance on prior-education GPA, biomedical knowledge test, curriculum-sampling test, and CV.

Main Results:

• First-generation Western immigrants and those with foreign education had lower selection chances.
• Men underperformed on CVs but scored higher on biomedical knowledge tests compared to women.
• Applicants with non-Western migration backgrounds scored lower on curriculum-sampling tests; first-generation Western immigrants had lower CV scores.

Conclusions:

• Selection procedures in HPE can create barriers for certain applicant subgroups, impacting diversity.
• Different selection tools exhibit varied effectiveness and biases across demographic groups and programs.
• Continuous evaluation and exploration of alternative selection tools are crucial for promoting equity and diversity in HPE.