Student perceptions about the occurrence of critical incidents in tutorialgroups

The study reported here examines student perceptions about the occurrence o f critical incidents in tutorial groups across years of medical training. T he study investigates the following research questions. (1) Which factors u nderlie the occurrence of critical incidents in the tutorial group (2) How do students rate the incidents with respect to whether they occur in the tu torial groups? (3) Are there differences in scores on the factors identifie d across years of medical training? The subjects consisted of a stratified random sample of 200 students at the Medical School of the University of Ma astricht. In general, the results of the confirmatory factor analyses indic ate that a six-factor model showed a good fit. The results show that studen ts frequently perceive lack of elaboration, lack of interaction and unequal participation in tutorial groups. For most of the factors (lack of elabora tion, difficult personalities, lack of cohesion, and lack of motivation) th e average scores differ significantly (p<0.01) across the years.