Comparison of study approaches and academic performance of first, second, third and fourth year medical students

Students use a set of mental activities while studying to apply different study approaches according to their performance, the nature of the curriculum and their mastery during the study. This study aimed to compare study approaches and academic performance of male and female medical students in the first, second, third and fourth years (basic sciences and physiopathology).

The method of this study is descriptive-cross-sectional.The sample of this study is 287 medical students in basic sciences and physiopathology in Tehran University of Medical Sciences in the academic year 2018-2019 who were selected through Stratified sampling. The tools of approaches to study and learning Were used. Analysis was performed by Anova test.

The results showed that the score of surface approaches to study of first year students is significantly lower than third year and fourth year students.
Third-year students' use of the strategic & deep approach was significantly lower than second, third and fourth year students.

The present study has shown new results on the transition of the use of approaches  to study during the four years of general medicine. Students' use of surface, deep and strategic approaches has grown transitionly and in higher years, the use of surface approach has decreased and more deep and strategic approaches are used.  after the second year due to the different structure of the curriculum, academic failure is observed.