title: Objective, Structured Proforma to Score the Merit of Scientific Presentations.
abstract: Around 100,000 medical conferences are organized all over the world and hence, they form an integral part of a medical professional's life. Oral presentations, especially award sessions, are judged by a panel of faculty judges who score individual presentations on various aspects including content, delivery and submission. Our objective was to compare the scores given by student-judges and faculty-judges for scientific presentations using the standardized score sheet. An objective, structured score-sheet was designed using existing literature. Five presentations, all made using PowerPoint, were judged using the structured score-sheet by seven student-judges and two-faculty judges. The mean score of all the score-sheets (n = 45) was 38.5 + 5.4 (out of a maximum score of 50). There was no statistical difference between mean scores assigned by students or faculty (p = 0.2). Thus, an objective, structured score sheet like ours, when used to judge scientific presentations, gave uniform results even when judges hailed from different levels of the medical hierarchy.
authors.affiliation: Medical Education Unit, University College of Medical Sciences, Delhi, 110095 India.
authors.forename: Nayan
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Agarwal
authors.affiliation: Medical Education Unit, University College of Medical Sciences, Delhi, 110095 India ; F-61/B, Gangotri Enclave, Alaknanda, New Delhi, 110019 India.
authors.forename: Rajat
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Thawani
authors.affiliation: Medical Education Unit, University College of Medical Sciences, Delhi, 110095 India.
authors.forename: Setu
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gupta
authors.affiliation: Medical Education Unit, University College of Medical Sciences, Delhi, 110095 India.
authors.forename: Arun
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sharma
authors.affiliation: Medical Education Unit, University College of Medical Sciences, Delhi, 110095 India.
authors.forename: Upreet
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Dhaliwal
keywords: Bias; Conferences; Medical education; Presentations