Medical students' personal knowledge, searching proficiency, and database use in problem solving

The relationship between personal knowledge in a domain and searching proficiency in that domain, and the relationship between searching proficiency and database-assisted problem-solving performance were the foci of this study. On four assessment occasions over a 2-year period, 36 medical students solved problems in three biomedical domains (bacteriology, pharmacology, and toxicology) with and without assistance from a factual database in the relevant domain. There was little evidence of any relationship between personal domain knowledge and searching proficiency (i.e., search results, selection of search terms, improvement in selection of search terms over the course of the search, and efficiency). Search results, selection of search terms, and efficiency were found to be related to database-assisted problem-solving performance. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.