‘Those who attend usually pass’, and other myths we can’t prove in practical exam performance: the role of academic practice, proxy-self efficacy, and self-esteem.

In the current Higher Education climate, there are concerns regarding the worth and value of degrees, and what students are ‘getting’ by attending and engaging with classes. This is particularly important to professional and practical degrees, where required must-pass practical assessments confer professional status to graduates. In this, pre-registered methods study, we investigated what behavioural and cognitive factors were predictive of must-pass, high-stakes practical exam performance in 47 veterinary students. We looked at two previously validated constructs including Proxy Self-Efficacy and Self Esteem, at students’ Personal Goals, and at a novel construct of Academic Practice, including elements like attendance, and beliefs around exams. In a binary logistic regression we could find no evidence that any of these factors had predictive power on practical exam performance (β= -0.09, 95% CI [-0.20, 0.01], p = 0.107). This study is notable for being a pre-registered methods approach, in that we were not able to retroactively redesign our study to find a significant result, and therefore is an important ‘null result’ study. We discuss possible reasons for the lack of relationship, including the potential for Type II errors and whether these constructs have validity in practical teaching, and implications for practice.