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A health examination is one of important events for freshmen when they enter a university. Consequently, the quality and time required for the examination are components in any index measuring the service performance of a university. However, performance measure for the health examination with a performance index is comparatively seldom. This paper aims to provide an index to measure health examination performance for freshmen.

A health examination performance index (HEPI) is defined for a university's health examination procedure. To make accurate use of the HEPI in assessing health examination performance, this paper constructs a uniformly minimum variance unbiased (UMVU) estimator of the HEPI using an exponential distribution to develop a hypothesis testing procedure.

Since health examination time exhibits the smaller‐the‐better type quality characteristic of time orientation, the HEPI is appropriate for evaluating the hospital's performance in providing freshmen health examinations. This study also investigates the relationship between the HEPI and the non‐conformance rate of health examination performance, and tabulates the non‐conformance rate under the exponential distribution.

The proposed testing procedure is easily applied and can accurately evaluate whether the true health examination performance for a hospital meets a university's requirement. It can also be used to select a qualified outsourcing hospital and improve the service provided by the school.

Due to its technical focus, the introductory accounting course has a hierarchical knowledge structure that requires students to master and integrate abstract knowledge which builds on itself over time. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between engagement and examination performance for students enrolled in a hierarchically structured course.

This research involves a retrospective study of an introduction to accounting course examining the relationship between increased engagement and examination performance. Students are provided opportunities for engagement through assigned homework and optional ungraded assignments. Performance is measured by scores on each of three examinations conducted throughout the semester.

The study finds that additional engagement in assignments has no significant impact on mid-semester examination performance; however, sustained engagement throughout the semester has a cumulative impact on final examination performance. Moreover, students that perform well on mid-semester examinations do not benefit from additional engagement, whereas students that perform poorly on the mid-semester examinations exhibit substantially higher final examination scores from sustained engagement.

This study illustrates the complex interplay between engagement and performance and the timing of performance gains. The implication for educators is that increased sustained engagement is likely to result in increased but delayed student performance gains in disciplines with hierarchical knowledge structures.

This study contributes to the literature in its examination of the timing of performance benefits gained from increased engagement in courses with a cumulative knowledge base.

Self‐efficacy has been defined as individuals’ beliefs, thoughts, and feelings about their personal capabilities that affect how they function and, which in turn influence their performance (Bandura 1977). Self beliefs can influence behaviour choices, determine the amount of effort needed and for how long, and encourage thought patterns and emotional behaviours necessary to succeed. It is theorised that students with unrealistic expectations (especially overly optimistic expectations) may have difficulty aligning efforts with desired performance levels and, as a result, perform more poorly. In this study, selfefficacy is operationalised as the difference between actual and predicted examination performance. Prediction errors in the final examination marks (MERR) and prediction error in the overall course grade (GERR) of a second year management accounting course are used as measures of Self‐efficacy. Using regression analysis, the results indicate that the efficacy measures are significant and positively related to course performance. This suggests that students who are more conservative in their expectations of the course results perform better than those who are more optimistic. The findings also showed that student characteristics of previous academic achievements (CGPA) and hours of study per week (HRWK) explained more that 40 per cent of the variations in the self‐efficacy measures. The higher a student’s CGPA, the more conservative or cautious he is in the prediction of his final course performance. The more pessimistic a student is of his final course performance, the lower the number of hours he estimates for studying the course.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association between the use of a computerised learning tool (specifically designed to teach consolidation accounting) and student performance in the final examination of an undergraduate accounting unit on Corporate Accounting.

A regression model was developed to analyse 1,103 observations of assignment and examination scores, collected over three semesters, to test the central proposition that computer assisted learning enhances student learning outcomes and performance in the exam.

The results show a positive and significant relationship between the computerised accounting assignment on consolidated accounting (linked to usage of the computerised tool) and the consolidation question in the final examination. The findings suggest that the computerised consolidation accounting package (CCAP) assists students to understand the concepts underpinning consolidation accounting.

The data were collected from a single institution, which may not represent the population of accounting students. Due to ethical obligations, the study lacked a control group that would have allowed meaningful comparison and assessment of student performance. Furthermore, whilst the findings in this study were able to demonstrate a positive association between the CCAP and exam performance, it is unable to determine the quality and depth of the learning experience from using the CCAP.

The present study found that a CCAP and its usage has the potential to positively impact student performance on assessment tasks on subject matter similar to concepts contained the computer package. Such findings may encourage instructors to seek ways of incorporating learning technologies in the pedagogical design.

This is believed to be one the few papers that has exclusively studied the impact of a specific CCAP and a specific segment in accounting education (consolidation accounting) using direct measures, CCAP assignment score and the final examination score for a question dedicated to consolidation accounting.

This study explores the factors affecting the results obtained by Southern African students in the professional qualification examinations of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA). Thirteen variables were identified and included in a questionnaire sent to CIMA students. It was found that three variables were significantly associated with examination success: age, tuition and study material. Younger candidates, candidates who attended part‐time tuition classes and candidates who used the textbooks published by BPP were more successful. Trends were also detected regarding gender, the number of papers written, and examination attempts: females tended to outperform males, candidates had a smaller chance of passing all the papers they sat if they took on more papers at a time, and first‐time candidates had a higher tendency to pass than repeat candidates. Opportunities for further research are discussed.

Recent major changes in the form and content tested on the Certified Public Accountant (CPA) exam have necessitated a re-examination of the relevance of undergraduate accounting coursework to CPA exam performance. Using data on candidates who attended an AACSB-accredited business school in the United States and who took the exam during the period 2005–2013, the authors examine whether the grades that candidates earned in relevant accounting course work affected their performance on related sections of the CPA exam. The authors find that student grades in related courses were positively associated with exam scores for all sections of the exam. This indicates that, despite changes to the exam and accounting education generally, an accounting curriculum can help prepare candidates to pass this critical barrier to entry in the accounting profession. The authors believe the results of this study have important implications for practitioners, academics, and candidates seeking to better understand the determinants of performance on this important professional examination.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of simulation laboratory on continuing education engineering students’ academic performance.

The investigation consists of establishing the student learning levels then mapping the student learning levels (knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation) through program outcomes with appropriate evaluation components. 270 continuing education students enrolled during six years were selected to be observed as part of this study. These students were divided into two subgroups, one with 135 students who were offered simulation lab (G2) and the other 135 students were not offered simulation lab (G1) in this investigation. Subsequently, a comparative analysis was carried out on these two groups to assess the student performance in multiple evaluation components with respect to student learning level and program outcome achievement.

It was identified that student performance in the application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation learning levels has improved for the group with simulation lab, and no change or minimal change was observed for the group without simulation lab. It was revealed that the simulation lab practice problems needs to be aligned with the theoretical concepts in the course to get a better performance from the students.

The study was conducted in one of the leading institutes with 270 students’ performance observed over a period of six years. It is the comprehensive work done on a complete program with data collated over a period of six years in multiple courses and multiple assessments.

The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of advent of electronic information resources on “academic and carrier related core aspects of user performance”.

Seven sampled agricultural universities across northern India were surveyed personally by the investigator for collecting data about the questions under investigation through a structured questionnaire. The response of the users for each statement under investigation was collected with simple “Yes”/“No” option. The investigator also resorted to the telephonic and e-mail communication to collect prompt response and had a personal interaction with respondents to substantiate the collected responses and remove any ambiguity thereof.

It is found that the majority of respondents are of the opinion that due to advent of e-resources the users’ interest in studies has enhanced (62.90 per cent) and that the e-resources have played a significant role in timely completion/submission of their study related assignments (74.30 per cent). It is also evident that a good proportion of respondents agree that the advent of e-resources has laid a positive impact on performance of users in “academic examinations” (50.80 per cent), “competitive examinations” (52.80 per cent), and the “interviews” (46.18 per cent) they face. Statistically, it is also verified that the performance of users with respect to five aspects investigated in this study is significantly associated with advent of e-resources (p < 0.01), whereas it does not show any association with one aspect i.e. “timely completion of an academic degree”.

The findings are based on mere opinion of users and need to be verified by devising a well-articulated methodology for verification of the user performance related facts both in print and electronic eras, independent of the users’ opinion.

The findings of this study shall prompt the budget allocating authorities of the libraries to reformulate their fund allocation policies. Findings of this study shall act as logical basis to enhance budget for improving the volume of e-resources. These also emphasize the fact that a provision of recurring fund needs to be created for facilitating single window based anytime anywhere access to the available e-information base, which may include annual subscription charges for availing (i) proxy software services for remote access and (ii) federated search engine for single window searching.

This is first work of its nature in northern Indian agricultural libraries. The findings will be useful for the authorities to decide about the degree of importance the libraries need to endorse with the procurement of information resources in electronic form. The study will really inspire the researchers and librarians to conduct similar studies in other specific domains of knowledge and come out with significant findings and suggestions.