Croxton and Cowden defined “statistics as a science which deals with the collection, classification, analysis, interpretation, and presentations of numerical data” and its application to the biological field or medical field is called biostatistics [1].

The role of biostatistics, epidemiology, and demography is well recognized in the curriculum of undergraduate medical schools or colleges in developed and developing countries [2].

Biostatistics, epidemiology, and demography are taught together in the third year (MBBS Final part 1) at university Ayush Raipur as a course is offered under the community medicine discipline.

The objective of this course is

1. To enable the medical student to understand the language and principle of biostatistics, epidemiology, and demography.
2. To highlight the nature and the distribution of disease.
3. To teach students to design their research project as well as to able to critically read and understand scientific papers in medical journals.

Thus, it covers the basic theoretical concept of biostatistics, epidemiology, and demography along with practical sessions.

The sequence of the topics was carefully observed so that biostatistics, epidemiology, and demography are taught in a parallel manner to amalgamate the knowledge of the topics which lectures were followed by practical sessions when applicable.

Purpose of the Study: Assessment of Undergraduate medical students gives insight into their learning and competencies. Term Examination or Test series are being increasingly used in such an assessment.

“Item Analysis” examines student responses to individual test items to assess the quality of those items and test as a whole to improve or revise items and the test [3-5].

“Psychometry” has been developed as a branch of psychology that deals with the measurement of psychological traits or mental abilities like intelligence, aptitude, opinion, interest, personality, or scholastic achievement [6].

(CG), after obtaining informed consent from all the participants, during the period from January 2020 to March 2020.

A self-administered subjective questionnaire was used to collect data for the study. The socio-demographic questionnaire was mailed to all third year (MBBS Final part I) students. A total of 130 students have participated, 55 (42.3%) males and 75 (57.7%) females participated in the study selected by universal sampling.

The researchers initially reviewed the curriculum of undergraduate medical courses in general, as well as Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Demography in particular.

Inclusion Criteria: All the third year (MBBS Final part I) students who were admitted in the 2016 batch.

Exclusion Criteria: Those who did not give verbal consent and who were not admitted in the 2016 batch (i.e. repeater or admitted on before 2016 batch).

Statistical Analysis: Data entry and analysis was done using computer software like Microsoft Excel & IBM SPSS Version 23.0. Frequencies or percentages have been presented for categorical variables. Difficulty Index was used to compare the Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Demography Module.

The aim of the study was explained to the third year (MBBS part I) students and they were informed that participation was voluntary. The questionnaire was administered in 2019 after completion of the community medicine module.

A total of 130 students participated in the study. The majority of the students were females (57.7%), 79.2% of the students were studied in English medium in the 12th class. The majority of the students were Hindu (90.0%), few of the students have studied biology with mathematics in the 12th class (14.6%). The majority 90.0% of the students were attended more than 60 percent classes and 72.3% of the students were taken more than 2 attempts for NEET Examination (Table 1). The mean age of the participant was 22 years along the standard deviation was 1.4 years. The Minimum and Maximum age were 20 - 30 years.

Table-1: Distribution Socio-Demographic

Fig-1: Distribution of the participants of Correctly solving the problems in the Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Demography Module.

Table-3: Difficulty Index Values.

Difficulty Index: The Difficulty of Biostatistics relative to Demography was 1.2 times greater than the difficulty of Biostatistics relative to Epidemiology and the difficulty of Biostatistics relative to Epidemiology was 4.8 times greater than the difficulty of Epidemiology relative to Demography in the Pre-University Examination. In the Final University Examination, the difficulty of Biostatistics relative to Epidemiology was 1.2 times greater than the Biostatistics relative to Demography and the difficulty of Biostatistics relative to Epidemiology was 7.3 times greater than the difficulty of Epidemiology relative to Demography.

Quality Medical care depends upon the development of knowledgeable skilled and competent medical personnel. Any assessment whether formative or summative has an intense effect on learning and is an important variable in directing the learners in a meticulous way [7]. Teaching biostatistics is often considered a difficult task for medical students. However, no one can deny the need for biostatistics, epidemiology, and demography (vital statistics) in the medical curriculum. It is a general compromise regarding the use of basic biostatistics, epidemiology, and demography in medical research and practice.

2. It may also think of increase the length of lectures and the number of faculties particularly for Biostatistics and Research Methodology.
3. 3) Its recommended to scale up the study in other Medical schools and for the Postgraduate courses to know the variation in difficulty level.

The authors have an individual contribution to this article. The study design, Research concept done by Dr. Nirmal Verma, while data collection, data arrangement, data analysis, write up was done by Mr. Swapnil Shinkar, and Concept, Methodology, article layout done by Dr. Kamlesh Jain. The authors have no conflict of interest and they read and approved the final manuscript.