Original title: A self-perceived biostatistics literacy scale for medical students: development and psychometric evaluation
N. Meriç Konar, Aslı Süner, Damla Özyürek, Ozan Karaca · September 2026
Medical students need to understand statistics to practice medicine based on solid evidence. However, teachers did not have a tool specifically designed to test how medical students rate their own skills in this area. To fix this, researchers created and tested a new survey called the Biostatistics Literacy Scale. The tool works by asking students questions to judge their own understanding across three areas: Knowledge, AI-supported Skills, and Attitude. After testing the survey with medical students, the researchers trimmed weak questions to settle on a final 35-item version. They found that the scale is highly reliable and accurately measures student abilities. It also works equally well for both male and female students. For now, the survey is mainly tested and supported for students in their early medical school years. It can help schools evaluate and improve how they teach biostatistics.
Imagine you are a coach writing a fitness test for a team. You start with forty exercises, but some are too easy, some are confusing, and a few do not measure anything about fitness, so you test them on one group and cut the weak ones. Then you try the shortened test on a different team to see if it still holds together. In this paper, the researchers build a questionnaire the same way: they start with 40 questions about how confident medical students feel with statistics, remove the ones that do not work, and end with 35 questions that measure three separate things—knowledge, skills with AI tools, and attitude—while checking that the test behaves the same for men and women.
Medical students need biostatistics to read research critically, but no tool measured this specific skill in them. A validated 35-item scale lets educators see where students feel weak, target teaching, and check whether curricula actually improve biostatistics understanding. It also shows the current evidence only covers early-stage students, so broader use waits for more validation.
The scale is only validated for early-stage medical students in two Turkish medical schools; no senior or clinical-stage students were included. It measures self-perceived literacy, not actual ability, and no external criteria were tested. A streamlined form and independent validation are still needed before broader routine use.
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A self-perceived biostatistics literacy scale for medical students: development and psychometric evaluation — N. Meriç Konar, Aslı Süner, Damla Özyürek et al. — BMC Medical Education — doi:10.1186/s12909-026-10442-0
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.