The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of admission standards that have been used for undergraduate allied health and nursing programs. Five professions met the initial criteria including the awarding of a 2- or 4-year degree, a national board examination administered upon program completion, and published research covering entrance standards. The professions are: dental hygiene, medical technology, registered nursing, radiologic technology, and respiratory therapy.
Random-format meta-analysis was used to evaluate 28 years of research gathered from both published and unpublished documents. Length of time used for data collection was defined by published research using outcome parameters, including national board examinations. Forty-eight studies resulted in 230 comparable effect size variables.
Twenty-one predictors were identified in the research and were measured against 4 criterion variables. ACT English, entrance grade point average, and biology were statistically significant predictors for all 5 professions. While no predictors had a shared variance across all professions, 8 predictors resulted in shared variance when moderators were considered. These included: ACT English, math, science, and social science; chemistry; entrance grade point average; SAT verbal; and a specialized test, the AHPAT. Each of these measures used board scores as the criterion measure.
Moderators included the length of time used to gather data, year of study or publication, whether the study was published, and the profession. Profession had the largest effect on the statistical significance of the predictors.
Two- and 4-year programs were identified as subgroups. Considering the moderator, profession, only 2 predictors were affected by the subgroups: entrance grade point average in Medical Technology and ACT science in Registered Nursing.