Medical Students' Perception of Colors Influence on the Learning Process

Background: Human being are affected by the surrounding environment. One of the component of the environment is presence of various colors. Different colors exert different impact on human psychology and the state of human psychology affects the learning process.

Aims: We aimed to evaluate the perception of medical students about the different colors employed for the text and background that ease the process of readability and learning.

Study Design: Cross-sectional study.

Place and Duration of Study: Faculty of Medicine at Northern Border University (NBU) between 1/1/2023 and 1/2/2023.

Methodology: After the ethical approval, the questionnaire was circulated among the willing participants from the students of the Faculty of Medicine – NBU. There are two components of the questionnaire. The 1st part comprised a color chart in which there were one hundred different combinations of text and background colors. The 2nd part contains basic information such as the study year of MBBS and gender along with the questions regarding the color text that is easier to read & understand and the background color that they like most.

Results: One hundred and seventeen (117) medical students participated in this study (72 females and 45 males).The majority of students liked the black text with a white background while a small number liked the other text and background colors such as black and cyan, yellow and black, white and green, and black and yellow, respectively.

Conclusion: The perception of the majority of medical students is that the most easily read text is the text written with black color on a white background.