Metacognitive Awareness and Academic Achievement of Medical Students in Different Medical Colleges of Lahore, Pakistan

ABSTRACT

Introduction: To determine medical students' metacognitiveawareness and its impact on their academic performance.Study design: Cross-sectional analytic study. Place andDuration of Study Two different private medical College’sfrom Lahore. From March 2016 to September 2016.Material and Methods: Study was done among second yearstudents of two private medical colleges in Lahore. Students’first year academic achievement information was collectedand they also filled the semi- structured questionnaire onmetacognition regulation by the metacognitive awarenessof reading strategies inventory (MARSI) based on threedimensions of metacognition (GLOB, SUB and PROB).Simple random sampling, a type of probability samplingwas used for this study. The data were entered in SPSS 20,Metacognitive score was taken as an independent variablewhile academic performance (first professional part 1 results)was the dependent variable. For descriptive data, mean andstandard deviation were used. For categorical data, percentageand frequencies were used. Pearson correlation coefficientswere calculated to examine the item-total score correlationResult: A total 232 students participated. The reliabilitycoefficient of MARSI was 0.88 and there was strongcorrelation among all dimensions of Metacognition score andacademic achievement with Correlation coefficient value was0.257 (p<0.01). Medical students of different colleges havealmost equal (college 1 std. deviation 109±15.3, college 2 std.deviation 110.6±17.3) Metacognition levels.Conclusion: All dimensions of metacognition are positive andstrongly correlated with each other’s. Higher the score in onedimension will cause positive change in other dimension scoreand vice versa. Overall it would be beneficial for the trainersand other mentors that to work on one dimension and it wouldalso cause positive impact on other skills and strategies.