Title
Assessing the impact of reciprocal peer assessment and feedback activities on medical students' confidence in the pharmacology exam
Authors
Mangesh Bankar¹, Ankit Gupta²,* & Sachchidanand Tewari¹
Affiliation
¹Department of Pharmacology, AIIMS, Raebareli, Uttar Pradesh, India; ²Department of Biochemistry, AIIMS, Raebareli, Uttar Pradesh, India; *Corresponding author
Mangesh Bankar - E-mail: drmbankar@gmail.com
Ankit Gupta - E-mail: guptaankitbiochem07@gmail.com
Sachchidanand Tewari - E-mail: sachchi.t5@gmail.com
Article Type
Research Article
Date
Received September 1, 2026; Revised September 30, 2026; Accepted September 30, 2026, Published September 30, 2026
Abstract
Medical undergraduates often have a negative perception of pharmacology, and evidence on whether reciprocal peer assessment and feedback (RPAF) improves examination-related confidence is limited. This pre–post interventional study included 97 second-year MBBS students who completed an 8-item, 5-point Likert confidence questionnaire before and after a structured RPAF session conducted following a part completion test. Mean confidence scores increased significantly from 21.68 ± 4.83 to 26.22 ± 4.25, with a mean change of +4.54 ± 5.56 (Wilcoxon W = 438.5, p < 0.001, r = 0.678), and all 8 items showed significant improvement. Although males had higher baseline confidence, the post-test gender difference was not significant, and no demographic variable significantly predicted the change in confidence. Thus, we show that a single RPAF session can significantly improve pharmacology examination confidence and reduce the baseline gender confidence gap.
Keywords
Reciprocal peer assessment, peer feedback, pharmacology education, examination confidence, self-efficacy, formative assessment
Citation
Bankar et al. Bioinformation 22(9): 5684-5689 (2026)
Edited by
Vini Mehta
ISSN
0973-2063
Publisher
License
This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.
