Student attitudes and their academic performance: is there any relationship?

This study examined the relationship between students' attitudes to consultation skills, their confidence in performing those skills and their academic results. Final-year medical students completed a questionnaire before and after the year 6 general practice attachment, which teaches holistic, patient-centred clinical management and emphasizes core verbal and non-verbal communication skills. When underlying academic ability was taken into account only pre-attachment attitudes regarding the importance of consultation skills remained significantly correlated with at least one measure of performance. Student confidence in performing a skill was not associated with academic measures of performance. These results show that students perform better on those skills that they value and this may be influenced by underlying motivation to master the skill. In contrast, students' confidence in performing a skill is not related to their assessed performance and using confidence as a performance measure may misrepresent the quality of learning being assessed.