Effect of medical school attended on the chances of successfully embarking on a clinical-academic career in the UK

Purpose of the studyThis study aimed to investigate whether, in the UK, medical school attended influences the propensity to apply to and be successful in obtaining an offer from the Academic Foundation Programme (AFP), thus taking the first step to embarking on a clinical-academic career.Study designA retrospective observational study was performed. Using the UK Foundation Programme’s yearly statistical report data, mean application rates to, and mean offer rates from the AFP were calculated by medical school, between the years 2017–2019. Mean application and mean offer rates were subsequently correlated with metrics of medical school academic performance and research focus.ResultsMean application rates to the AFP were higher in medical schools that had a mandatory intercalated degree as part of the undergraduate medical curriculum (mean=33.99%, SD=13.93 vs mean=19.44%, SD=6.88, p<0.001), lower numerical rank in the Times Higher Education 2019 World Rankings (correlation with higher numerical rank, r=−0.50, p=0.004), and lower numerical rank in the Research Excellence Framework 2014 UK rankings (correlation with higher numerical rank, r=−0.37, p=0.004). Mean offer rates from the AFP were not correlated with any metric of medical school academic performance or research focus.ConclusionsStudents attending a medical school with greater academic performance and research focus are more likely to apply and subsequently embark on a clinical-academic career. However, students wishing to embark a clinical-academic career from any medical school have an equal chance of success.

Format Neglect: How the Use of Numerical Versus Percentage Rank Claims Influences Consumer Judgments

Marketers often claim to be part of an exclusive tier (e.g., “top 10”) within their competitive set. Although recent behavioral research has investigated how consumers respond to rank claims, prior work has focused exclusively on claims having a numerical format. But marketers often communicate rankings using percentages (e.g., “top 20%”). The present research explores how using a numerical format claim (e.g., “top 10” out of 50 products) versus an equivalent percentage format claim (e.g., “top 20%” out of 50 products) influences consumer judgments. Across five experiments, the authors find robust evidence of a shift in evaluations whereby consumers respond more favorably to numerical rank claims when set sizes are smaller (i.e., <100) but more favorably to percentage rank claims when set sizes are larger (i.e., >100), even when the claims are mathematically equivalent. They further show that this change in evaluations occurs because consumers commit format neglect when making their evaluations by relying predominantly on the nominal value conveyed in a rank claim and insufficiently accounting for set size.

An Overview of Various Importance Measures of Reliability System

One of the purposes of system reliability analysis is to identify the weaknesses or the critical components in a system and to quantify the impact of component’s failures. Various importance measures are being introduced by many researchers since 1969. These component importance measures provide a numerical rank to determine which components are more important to system reliability improvement or more critical to system failure. In this paper, we overview various components importance measures and briefly discuss them with examples. We also discuss some other extended importance measures and review the developments in study of various importance measures with respect to some of the popular reliability systems.