An investigation of the self-evaluation skills of first year Pharmacy students

Introduction: Self-evaluation is an important skill in many fields of endeavour, including education and learning. Health-care workers, e.g. pharmacists, have a particular need to develop this skill. We therefore investigated the self-evaluation skills of several cohorts of pharmacy undergraduates during the first year of their course. Students were asked to predict their end of first year and end of course results, and these predictions were compared with their actual marks. Methods: A wide-ranging questionnaire was designed to interrogate a number of aspects of students’ lives, including their perceptions of their present and future academic progress. Arrangements were made for it to be completed during a scheduled class (the captive audience approach). Results: The response rate to the questionnaire, using this approach, was 87%. Male students were found to predict better academic performance for their final degree than females, despite the fact that females outperformed males in both first and final year. Most students, both male and female, predicted better marks for themselves in the final year than in the first year. In general, the better students gave more realistic predictions than the weaker students. Conclusions: These findings suggest that first year students do not have good self-evaluation skills, and might benefit from formal opportunities to practise self-evaluation during their time at University.