Gender differences in students' self-reported estimates of clinical experience

Dental staff may make supervisory judgments based on students' reports of their clinical experience. An exploratory analysis comparing students' reports of their experience in restorative dentistry suggested a gender related difference in the accuracy of students' estimates. Objective: To compare the accuracy of male and female students' estimates of the volume their clinical work. Design: Comparison of dental students' self-reports and existing departmental records. Method: A single cohort was considered. Clinical records of amalgam, composite and glass ionomer restorations were totalled (To) for the fourth year dental students to the end of the first semester of 2005/2006. Separately, within a week of that census, students reported to the School's outreach administrator their estimated numbers of completed simple plastic restorations (Ta, identified on the data collection form as amalgam, composite and glass ionomer restorations) with annotations to inform outreach supervisors of their clinical experience. Data reported later were excluded from the analysis. The percentage overestimate was calculated as 100x(Ta-To)/Ta and tested for gender differences. Results: Data were available from 55 of 63 students in the cohort. Lost to analysis were 5 males and 3 females. The students' average number of completed restorations (To) was 47(SD=15). For males the mean overestimate was 18%(SD=4%,n=37). For females the underestimate was 2%(SD=2%,n=18), p=0.05 (t-test). Conclusion: Male students over report their clinical experience while females slightly under report it. This may be a cautionary finding for supervising staff using such estimates to gauge students' abilities.