Perception of Causes of Repetition Amongst Dentistry Students A Novel Experience with Content Analysis

Enrique A. Fernández Montecinos; Paula A. Padilla Alvear & Marco Díaz-Yokens

Summary

To determine the perception of fourth-year dentistry students at a private Chilean university, regarding the causes of their course repetition. Open-ended questions were asked to 14 repeating students. The resulting narratives went through content analysis using QDA Miner Lite software. The category "non-fullfilment with clinical requirements" had the highest frequency of appearance (52.0 %). Codes with the highest frequency of appearance were "Lacked of time" (24.0 %); "Lack of proper organization of time/patient’s agenda" (18.0 %) and "Lack of knowledge of the clinical dynamics" (16.0 %). The tardiness and repeated absences of the patients were mentioned as the greatest difficulty faced by the students (18.0 %). Students perceive the reasons behind their repetition, differently. However aspects associated with compliance of clinical requirements and patients management are recurring issues. Content analysis is a useful tool for acquiring and analyzing data of complex phenomena as perspectives on university repetition among higher-level dentistry students.

KEY WORDS: academic failure, academic performance, perception, dentistry school.

How to cite this article

FERNÁNDEZ, M. E. A.;PADILLA, A. P. A. & DÍAZ-YOKENS, M. Perception of causes of repetition amongst dentistry students. A novel experience with content analysis. Int. J. Odontostomat., 15(1):125-131, 2021.