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3. Study Designs One important factor in determining the nature of this study was the decision to focus on students using the package in the normal course of their studies. Consideration was given to the notion of volunteers or paid candidates but it would have been difficult to guarantee the same level of motivation as that of the target audience for the package and probably also impossible to guarantee a wide spread of ability from a self selecting group. Furthermore, by including whole year groups in the study, we have had the advantage of a large sample. The total number of valid cases included in the study is 854. Year groups at several institutions were included, depending upon time-tabling constraints and the ways in which the packages were implemented. For the first package - Nomenclature of Organic Compounds, four sites were selected where the package was presented to students in an identical, or nearly identical way, although, as will be shown later in this paper, there were still a number of material differences between institutions and the results are presented separately. For the remaining two packages, sites were selected to fulfil time-tabling constraints and to include a range of teaching methods using each package. Four sites were chosen for the Guinea Pig Ileum package and three for the Community Pharmacy package. This amounts to eleven case studies and is therefore an extensive study. In this paper we will present a summary of the results and conclusions, after considering the methods employed.