investigating the knowledge of general dental students and residents regarding practical self-assessment skills

Background: self-assessment (sa) means assessing or judging efficiency, and identifying strengths and weaknesses to improve learning outcomes.objectives: the present study aims to investigate the knowledge, and attitude of the students of kerman dental faculty regarding practical self-assessment skills.methods: this cross-sectional descriptive-analytic study included 220 residents, and general students of kerman faculty of dentistry. data was collected using a questionnaire consisting of two parts. in the first part, the demographic information was recorded. the second part questioned students’ knowledge and attitude toward practical self-assessment skills. the intra-class coefficient and content validity index of the questionnaire were 0.72 and 0.83, respectively. data were analyzed using a t-test, analysis of variance, and multivariate regression in spss 21 software. p-value<0.05 was considered as the statistical significance level.results: the results indicated that the average score of questionnaire was 44.45 ± 6.58 for women and 42.60 ± 5 for men, which was significantly higher in the female students (p-value=0.02). moreover, the average score of residents was 46.4±6.21, considerably higher than general students (42.99 ± 5.80) (p value = 0.01). finally, the average score of students at public colleges was equal to 44.48 ± 6.10, higher than that to those studying at private colleges (41.56 ± 5.35) (p-value = 0.01), which shows better self-assessment skills.conclusion: the study highlights the critical role of self-assessment skills to improve the dental students learning ability, performance, and independency. moreover, it is recommended that regular self-assessment skills be considered significantly in dentistry curricula.