Data from: Medical school selection criteria as predictors of medical student empathy: a cross sectional study of medical students, Ireland

Objectives: To determine whether performance in any of the HPAT sections, most specifically the interpersonal understanding section, correlates with self-reported empathy levels in medical students.
Setting: The study was conducted in University College Cork, Ireland.
Participants: 290 students participated in the study. Matching HPAT scores were available for 263 students. All male and female undergraduate students were invited to participate. Post graduate and international students were excluded.
Primary and secondary outcome measures: HPAT-Ireland and JSPE scores were compared including subsection analysis. Comparisons were made between groups such as gender and year of programme.
Results : A total of 290 students participated. Males scored significantly higher than females for total HPAT-Ireland [U = 7329, z = -2.04, p < 0.05], HPAT-Ireland Section 1 [U = 5382, z = -5.21, p < 0.0001], and Section 3 scores [U = 6833, z = -2.85, p < 0.01]. In contrast, females scored significantly higher than males on HPAT-Ireland Section 2 [U = 5844, z = -4.46, p < 0.0001]. Females demonstrated significantly higher total JSPE scores relative to males [mean score ± SEM: 113.33 ± 1.05 vs 109.21 ± 0.95; U = 8450, z = -2.83, p < 0.01]. No significant association was observed between JSPE scores and any of the HPAT-Ireland measures [all p > 0.05]. There was no effect of programme year on JSPE scores [all p >0.05].
Conclusion : The introduction of the HPAT–Ireland test was partly designed to identify students with strong interpersonal skills. A significant finding of this study is that JSPE values did not correlate with HPAT-Ireland scores. This study suggests no clear link between scores on a selection test, the HPAT-Ireland, which is designed to assess several skill domains including interpersonal skills, and scores on a psychometric measure of empathy, at any point during medical education.