Current performance as an indicator of the foreign students' KROK-2 license examination results

Aim: The aim of the work is to comprehensively assess the impact of indicators of current success of foreign students on the results of passing the licensing exam KROK-2 and its component - the subtest "Hygiene, Public Health".

Materials and Methods: A single-center retrospective quantitative study was conducted, during which a dataset of foreign students (n=70) with depersonalized records of current performance for the 3rd and 6th years, ECTS scales, traditional grades, the final result of KROK-2 and the subtest "Hygiene, Public Health" (2025) was analyzed. Data processing and modeling were carried out in the Python.

Results: Current success in the 6th year is statistically related to the result of KROK-2, but explains a limited proportion of the variation in the result (R2≈0.13-0.21). Indicators of the 3rd year provide moderate incremental value; the most informative is PC_3% (independent association in the extended model). ECTS (6th year) acts as a suitable risk stratifier: categories D/E are associated with a decrease in the expected result from STEP-2 by approximately 11 percentage points compared to the reference C. Traditional assessments have a clear linear gradient: in the 6th year ≈+8.9 p.p./point, in the 3rd year - ≈+7.3 p.p./point.

Conclusions: The Hygiene, Public health subtest is poorly predicted by overall grades in the 6th year of study, highlighting the need for subject-specific interventions. Multicollinearity between components of the 6th year current control is high; the use of robust and regularized approaches (HC3, PCA/PC1, Ridge, residualization) confirmed the robustness of key findings under alternative specifications.