Purpose
The purpose of this study is to identify possible causal relationships among personality traits, emotional status, learning strategies, and academic achievements of medical students and to testify mediating effect of learning strategies in these relationships.
Methods
The study subjects are 424 medical students in the academic year of 2020 at the Gyeongsang National University, Jinju, Korea. Using the Multi-dimensional Learning Strategy Test-II, we assessed the students’ academic achievements with personality traits, emotional status, and learning strategies. This study employed Structural Equation Modelling to explore the causal relationships among the latent variables.
Results
In the path model, personality traits directly affected academic achievements (β=0.285, p<0.05) and indirectly affected academic achievements via emotional status (β=0.063, p<0.01) and via learning strategies (β=0.244, p<0.05), respectively. Further, personality traits indirectly affected academic achievements via emotional status first and learning strategies next (β=0.019, p<0.05). Personality traits indirectly affected academic achievements through three multiple paths in the model (β=0.326, p<0.05). Learning strategies partially mediated the relationship between personality traits and academic achievements as well as the relationship between emotional status and academic achievements of medical students.
Conclusion
Study findings proved constructing the causal relationships among personality traits, emotional status, learning strategies, and academic achievements of medical students, thus supporting our hypotheses. Early habits of self-regulated learning are essential for the successful academic achievements of medical students. Therefore, medical students should know how to regulate personality traits and control emotional status, significantly affecting learning strategies.

PURPOSE
The purpose of this study is to judge the quality of clinical skills assessment in Busan-Gyeongnam Consortium.
METHODS
Fourth grade medical school students (n=350 in 2012 and n=419 in 2013) in the Busan-Gyeongnam Consortium were included in the study. The examination was consisted of 6 clinical performance examination (CPX) and 6 objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) stations. The students were divided into groups to take the exam in 4 sites during 3 days. The overall reliability was estimated by Cronbach alpha coefficient across the stations and the case reliability was by alpha across checklist items. Analysis of variance and between-group variation were used to evaluate the variation of examinee performance across different days and sites.
RESULTS
The mean total CPX/OSCE score was 67.0 points. The overall alpha across-stations was 0.66 in 2012 and 0.61 in 2013. The alpha across-items within a station was 0.54 to 0.86 in CPX, 0.51 to 0.92 in OSCE. There was no significant increase in scores between the different days. The mean scores over sites were different in 30 out of 48 stations but between-group variances were under 30%, except 2 cases.
CONCLUSION
The overall reliability was below 0.70 and standardization of exam sites was unclear. To improve the quality of exam, case development, item design, training of standardized patients and assessors, and standardization of sites are necessary. Above of all, we need to develop the well-organized matrix to measure the quality of the exam.