title: Peer-assessment of medical communication skills: the impact of students' personality, academic and social reputation on behavioural assessment.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Peer-assessment of communication skills may contribute to mastery of assessment criteria. When students develop the capacity to judge their peers' performance, they might improve their capacity to examine their own clinical performance. In this study peer-assessment ratings are compared to teacher-assessment ratings. The aim of this paper is to explore the impact of personality and social reputation as source of bias in assessment of communication skills.
  
  
  METHODS
  Second year students were trained and assessed history taking communication skills. Peers rated the students' personality and academic and social reputation.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Peer-assessment ratings were significantly correlated with teacher-ratings in a summative assessment of medical communication. Peers did not provide negative ratings on final scales but did provide negative ratings on subcategories. Peer- and teacher-assessments were both related to the students' personality and academic reputation.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Peer-assessment cannot replace teacher-assessment if the assessment should result in high-stake decisions about students. Our data do not confirm the hypothesis that peers are overly biased by personality and reputation characteristics in peer-assessment of performance.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Early introduction of peer-assessment in medical education would facilitate early acceptance of this mode of evaluation and would promote early on the habit of critical evaluation of professional clinical performance and acceptance of being evaluated critically by peers.
authors.affiliation: Academic Medical Centre, Department of Medical Psychology, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. R.L.Hulsman@AMC.UVA.NL
authors.forename: Robert L
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Hulsman
authors.forename: Joline F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Peters
authors.forename: Marcel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fabriek
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002983:Clinical Competence / Q000592:standards*; D003142:Communication; D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate / Q000379:methods; D004521:Educational Measurement / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D010379:Peer Group; D010380:Peer Review / Q000379:methods*; D010551:Personality; D012938:Social Perception; D013337:Students, Medical / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
keywords: Medical communication; Medical education; Peer-assessment; Personality; Social and academic reputation