Fifty Years of Findings from the Jefferson Longitudinal Study of Medical Education

This book assembles research findings accumulated over the span of half a century from the Jefferson Longitudinal Study (JLS). This study, initiated in 1970, is the most comprehensive, extensive, and uninterrupted longitudinal study of medical students and graduates maintained in a single medical school. The study was based on the conviction that medical schools have a social responsibility and ethical obligation to monitor the quality of their educational programs, to assess their educational outcomes, and to ensure that their educational goals have been achieved for the purposes of public safety. The JLS has resulted in a large number of publications in professional peer-reviewed journals and presentations in national and international meetings. Some medical schools have expressed interest in learning more about the JLS, requesting copies of the instruments we used in the study, information about how to set up a longitudinal study of medical education, and other needed resources. In response to a request from Academic Medicine [2011, 86(3), p. 404], we prepared and published in that journal a schematic snapshot of the JLS for those interested in a model for the development of a longitudinal study of medical students and graduates. 

The JLS is well-known to the medical education research communities. A recent Google search using keywords “Jefferson Longitudinal Study” resulted in 1,550,000 hits, an indication of its broad popularity among researchers. At the present time, the JLS database contains academic information, assessments, and educational and career outcomes for 13,343 medical students and graduates of Sidney Kimmel (formerly Jefferson) Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University. There are presently 502 variables in the JLS analytic database. This book presents a collection of 207 abstracts of major publications from peerreviewed journals, books, and book chapters in which data and information from the JLS were used. In this book, we classified the abstracts, based on their primary contents, into the following categories:

• Admissions of the Applicants to Medical School (e.g., standardized tests, academic preparation, other admission variables). 
• Demographic Composition (e.g., gender, age, race/ethnicity). 
• Performance Evaluations in Medical School (e.g., preclinical and clinical phases). 
• Postgraduate and Career (e.g., assessment of clinical competence in residency training, career choice, specialization, professional activities). 
• Psychosocial Attributes (e.g., personal qualities, indicators of physical and mental well-being). 
• Professionalism (e.g., assessment of elements of professionalism in medicine, such as clinical empathy, attitudes toward interprofesssional collaboration, and orientation.