Comparison of dental students selected as student clinicians by Japanese dental schools.

The aim of this study was to determine if students selected from Japanese dental schools for competition at the Japan Dental Association meeting and who subsequently won awards were different from students who did not win. Eighty abstracts submitted from 1995 to 2001 by dental students for the Japan Student Clinician Program (SCP) award were evaluated. Multiple logistic regression analysis using backward stepwise selection was completed with the dependent variables. The results were as follows: 1) more female students won awards than did male students, but the difference was not statistically significant; 2) students who had a higher level of dental education won more awards, but the difference was not statistically significant; and 3) students presenting clinical subjects for the table clinic had a higher probability of being selected as prize winners (P<.05) than did those dental students presenting basic science subjects. Only the subject field of table clinic had a statistical correlation to prize-winning possibility, which implies that this program fairly evaluated students based on a scoring system used by the judges. No discriminations in gender and level of dental education were observed. This study suggests that the methodology used here might apply to other award programs to determine if the program is fair, equal, and unbiased.