The aim of this paper was to pilot test the L2MSS among Croatian university students using the motivation questionnaire developed by Taguchi et al. (2009). This study attempted to validate subscales of the Taguchi et al. (2009) questionnaire in a Croatian context and provide a basis for further investigation of the L2MSS. A total of 110 first year students, who were non- English majors from the University of Zadar, participated in the pilot study. The results of the factor analysis show that the items tested in each subscale had salient loadings and showed satisfactory internal consistency. It can be concluded that the sub-scales can be used on a larger sample for further studies and research on the L2MSS.

We surveyed 27 anesthesiology residents to determine their basic understanding of biostatistics. We wanted to see how well they could interpret statistical presentation in biomedical literature and assess research outcomes. The questionnaire included three sections: demographics of the participants, their knowledge of statistics (21 questions) and their attitude and self reported confi dence about biostatistics. Recognition of a meta-analysis was the highest scoring question (85% gave the correct answer), and recognition of a case-control study scored the lowest (22%). There was no effect of gender, the year of study, the number of years elapsed since graduation at the medical school, or country in which the participants had attended medical school (US or foreign schools). The only factor that increased the number of correct answers signifi cantly was an additional course in biostatistics that two participants had attended after graduation. Sixty six percent indicated they did not understand all of the statistics they encountered in journal articles, but all of the participants felt it was important to be able to understand the literature. We conclude that most residents in this study lack the knowledge in biostatistics needed to interpret results in medical publications. Most participants in this survey expressed the desire to improve their knowledge on this subject, even though it would require taking special courses in basic epidemiology, and statistics for the non-statistician during their residency training.