Analyzing Consistency Among Various Resources Utilized by Medical Students

Medical students are faced with not only a myriad of material they are expected to learn but also a wide range of resources that they can utilize to obtain their necessary information. With a wide selection of resources, it is important to gauge the extent of uniformity that may or may not be present amongst these resources often used by the medical students and faculty alike. In this study, network analysis has been used in order to assess the consistency amongst the topics that are found in course materials, reference materials, and review books. All analyses and visualizations in this study are conducted using R programming software. The various resources have been assessed using multiple similarity indices, and a novel use of network data visualization tools and multiple network analytic variables in order to obtain a comprehensive interpretation. The appearance of these graphs, homophily, and other network metrics using similarity indices reveals consistency amongst these various study tools which topics they discuss. Topics do not segregate by type. Results are similar with all four similarity indices. There is a predictable trend for board review books to have fewer topics. This study provides an insight into the evaluation of educational resources by network and statistical methods, and the consensus by experts on the choice of important topics for medical students.