Perfectionism in and its association with academic performance in medical students Studying at Iran University of Medical Sciences (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Perfectionism is a personality dimension of everyone. A perfectionist strives for excellence and sets high standards for his performance. Perfectionism can be classified into adaptive or maladaptive patterns, which affects academic performance. OBJECTIVE In this study perfectionism is compared between medical students of basic sciences and internship period and its association with their academic performance is investigated METHODS The Persian translated version of Hill perfectionism questionnaire was used. The validity and reliability of this version were confirmed in Jamshidi et al study, which was frequently used in various Iranian studies. In this study the questionnaire has been administered to two groups of medical students (basic sciences students and interns) of Iran University of Medical Sciences (n=49). In addition, the correlation of total Grade Point Average (GPA) of students with perfectionism dimensions was evaluated. Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was applied to analyze the normality of data distribution, Mann-Whiney U test was used for between-group comparison of non-parametric data and student t-test was applied to analyze parametric data. Further, Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficient tests were used to analyze the correlation between variables. P value was considered significant (P<0.05). RESULTS The basic sciences students had a higher total mean score of perfectionism than the interns (193.4±26.5 vs. 178.1±24.2, p=0.000). The adaptive perfectionism rate was higher in the basic sciences group (p=0.000), but it showed no significant difference with that of the interns. Regarding perfectionism domains, the scores of striving for excellence, purposefulness and need for approval were higher in basic sciences group (p=0.00), and there was no significant difference between the groups in other domains. Maladaptive perfectionism had an inverse correlation with GPA (p=0.01, r=-0.3) and there was no correlation with adaptive perfectionism and gender. CONCLUSIONS The study findings showed that positive perfectionism was higher in basic sciences students, and maladaptive perfectionism was correlated with a drop in GPA in both groups.