Based on their replies, students were labelled as being in the "control" (neither questionnaire nor lecture: Groups 3A and 4A) or "intervention" (questionnaire + lecture: Groups 3B and 4B) cohorts.
After students had filled in the questionnaire, the lecture was given and the multiple choice test was taken.
The students were handed the questionnaires by the study team and were asked to return the completed questionnaires to lecture hall attendants, the public health department or members of the study team.
Although administering the questionnaire during lectures ensured a high response rate, the exclusion of those who did not attend lectures from the study sample might have led to a loss of data from those whose absence was due to mental health problems that they were facing.
The weekend workshop features self-assessment questionnaires, brief lectures, exercises, case studies and small-group discussions.
Student opinion on the lectures was measured using a standardised University of Adelaide Student Experience of Learning and Teaching (SELT) questionnaire for each lecture.
However, the next thing to consider is that the distribution, filling in and collection of the LIST questionnaire in a lecture hall holding several hundred students lasts almost 30 min, precious time that both lecturers and students would rather spend on mathematics.
We also assessed a questionnaire given to lecture participants and found the results to be essentially positive.
In addition the overall scores showed that of 231, 141 questionnaires scored the lecture as 5 and 80 as 4, leaving only 10 questionnaires scoring a lecture as less than good.
Participation in the survey was voluntary via a self-administered questionnaire distributed during lectures.
At the end of the program, the (posttest) JSPE were distributed again with another anonymous questionnaire for post-lecture program assessment.
