Loading…
The relationship between high school class rank and performance on the paramedic national certification written exam
Introduction: Academic history is a well-established predictor of educational success. Prerequisites to advanced emergency medical services (EMS) educational programs are a highly debated topic, especially in the face of possible workforce shortages. While it may be intuitive that academic history s...
Saved in:
| Published in: | Prehospital emergency care 2004-12, Vol.8 (4), p.435-435 |
|---|---|
| Main Authors: | , |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Online Access: | Get full text |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Summary: | Introduction: Academic history is a well-established predictor of educational success. Prerequisites to advanced emergency medical services (EMS) educational programs are a highly debated topic, especially in the face of possible workforce shortages. While it may be intuitive that academic history should have a bearing on success in EMS education, no empirical evidence demonstrates this relationship.
Hypothesis: There is a relationship between high school class rank and first-attempt success rate on the written portion of the national paramedic certification examination.
Methods: Candidates taking the National Registry of EMTs paramedic exam in 2002 were asked to report their high school class rank at the bottom of the exam answer sheet. High school class rank was correlated to first-time pass rate.
Results: The paramedic written exam was administered 12,623 times during the study period, of which 8,176 were first attempts (64.8%). Of these, 5,774 (70.6%) candidates reported their high school class rank. More than half (55.9%) of the candidates taking the exam reported graduating in the top 30% of their high school classes, with only 5.5% in the lower 30%.
Conclusion: There is a strong relationship between a candidate's self-reported high school class rank and the first-time pass rate on the written portion of the national certification exam. More research is needed to determine whether this relationship is causal or correlational.
First-time Pass
First-time Fail
Self-reported High School Class Rank
n
%
n
%
n
%
Bottom 10%
94
1.6
55
58.5
39
41.5
Lower 20%
223
3.9
113
50.7
110
49.3
Middle 40%
2,234
38.7
1,305
58.4
929
41.6
Upper 20%
1,926
33.4
1,291
67.0
635
33.0
Top 10%
1,297
22.5
1,029
79.3
268
20.7
Chi-square
=
185.63 (p ≤ 0.001). |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1090-3127 1545-0066 |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.prehos.2004.06.003 |