An Evaluation on the Effectiveness of Public Health Education by the SNU Graduates Currently Working at Health-related Jobs

보건분야 종사 졸업생에 의한 서울대학교 보건대학원 교육효과 평가

Educational goals of SPH were two-fold : One was to train a health professions who should take charge of a leading roles, another were to educate the researchers of public health. There were strong demands to evaluate whether these goals had been effectively achieved through the master's course of SPH or not. According to the educational goals of SPH, public health is an applied science to be applicable to health-related fields. The curriculum of SPH has to be built under this principle and be evaluated by someone regularly. Who evaluates that? The most pertinent appraiser is the graduates of public health currently working at health-related jobs. It was the purpose of the study to let the graduates evaluate their education and the curriculum that they had undertaken during master's course at SNU. If the results of the evaluation by the graduates were not satisfactory, we should find the actual causes of low scored apraisal and reform the curriculum of SPH as the process of problem solving. During September and October 1996, a postal survey was undertaken of the 293 SNU graduates of public health who had been engaged in the health related jobs. As 198 graduates answered out of 293, the response rate was 67.6%. The questionnaire was designed to ascertain how well the SNU master's course of public health had helped their practice. The SAS package was used for statistical analysis and $x^2$-test as a test of statistical significance. Major findings of the study were summarized as follows: $\cdot$ The health related abilities consisted of three categories, which were health administration abilities composed of 14 items, health education abilities composed of 5 items, health research abilities composed of 10 items. $\cdot$ The respondents had acquired 'Worldwide trends of health policy', 'evaluation concepts of health projects', 'interpersonal relationships in professional life', and 'communication through writings' moe than other detailed items in the category of health administration abilities. $\cdot$ 'Establishment of educational and learning golas' was the most acquired item of 5 detailed items of health education abilities. $\cdot$ Respondents indicated that they had acquired ability 'to search reference', ' to understand health problems', 'to establish study plannings', and 'to collect health related data' more than other detailed items in the category of health research abilities.