The Undergraduate Medical and Health Sciences Admissions Test: what is it measuring?

The Undergraduate Medical and Health Sciences Admissions Test (UMAT) is used to select medical students in Australia and New Zealand but empirical evidence of its construct validity has never been reported. To identify the underlying constructs assessed in each of the three sections of the UMAT. Based on conclusions from an early qualitative study (Mercer Chiavaroli 2006), it was expected that Section 1 scores would correlate with scores obtained from standard measures of cognitive ability (verbal and numeric reasoning), Section 2 scores would correlate with emotional intelligence, and Section 3 scores would be most strongly related to abstract or non-verbal reasoning ability.