A recent article by Filip Lievens, Deniz Ones, and Stephan Dilchert looked at the relationship between personality and medial school success. This  follows the path of other researchers who are looking at non-cognitive factors in predicting academic outcomes.

They followed 600 Belgian medical students longitudinally throughout their academic careers. (Differing from the US model where medical school is essentially a 4-year graduate program, European students typically enter medical school directly from high school in what is a 7-year program.) They found that personality differentially predicted medical school outcome based upon the changing demands of medical school. (Especially in the European model, the first few years are comprised almost exclusively of basic science while latter years have an increased focus on clinical work and patient contact.) For example, openness and extraversion had increased validity in predicting performance over the 7-year period. Similarly, they found that while conscientiousness predicted grades throughout a medical student’s career, its validity increased from .18 to .45.

These specific findings aside, the article also is a good reminder that it can be important to study the validity of a predictor over time, especially in situations where task demands are dynamic and change predictably over time.

Reid Klion