Abstract
Medical schools place considerable emphasis on admissions interviews in the selection of students. Interviews, with unwritten performance criteria and subjective evaluation, contain the potential for unconscious discrimination against certain groups of applicants. This study investigates the contribution of interview scores to the total evaluation of male and female applicants for admission to one medical school in the United States. Findings reveal that interveiw scores are counted more heavily for females than males in arriving at a final ranking for admission. Further, females were rated lower in general than males on interview evaluations. While the magnitude of the associations is small, the combined effect points to a potential for discrimination, however unintended, against women applicants in the present case study.
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The authors appreciate the valuable criticisms of and comments on an earlier draft from Drs. Sidney Fleming, Dorothy Brinsfiled, Glenn Clark, Maurice Jurkiewicz, and Michael Kutner, some of whom may still take exception to parts of this article.
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Clayton, O., Baird, A.C. & Levinson, R.M. Subjective decision making in medical school admissions: Potentials for discrimination. Sex Roles 10, 527–532 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00287261
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00287261