Student pairing grade dataset

Medical students are often paired together on clinical teams during their clerkships, but the effect of this practice on student performance and the learning environment is unknown.

We examined 186 student-pairs at 3 sub-internship hospital sites of Harvard Medical School from 2013-2017 to assess whether students paired together on a medical team during their Internal Medicine sub-internship affected each other’s grade. We found no significant deviation between the expected and observed distribution of student grades (p=0.39) among 186 student pairs, suggesting that pairing had no meaningful effect on the sub-internship grade. We also saw no effect when controlling for prior internal medicine clerkship performance (p=0.53).