Objective To evaluate the teaching activity on public health courses from clinical medical students in our university in order to provide a scientific basis for improving the curriculum design and teaching reform. Methods　The “Questionnaire on Teaching Evaluation in Public Health Courses”

including teaching attitude

teaching content

teaching methods and teaching effectiveness was designed

and a general investigation was conducted among the clinical medical students of five-year program (840 students) and eight-year program (278 students) in these three aspects to under-stand students' evaluation to the course

who had finished the public health courses

including Preven-tive Medicine

Medical Statistics and Epidemiology (hereinafter referred to as: statistics

epidemiology

prevention) in Sun Yat-sen University. Statistical analysis was made using SPSS 13.0 software. Data analysis methods contain descriptive analysis

T-test

ANOVA

LSD

SNK

hierarchical logistic regres-sion analysis

etc. Results　The overall score of teaching evaluation is (4.04±0.60). Differences exist between the evaluation in the five-year medical students and the eight-year medical students. The P values were 0.000 (Medical Statistics)

0.269 (Epidemiology)

0.047 (Preventive Medicine). The com－parison of scores among the four dimensions shows: Teaching effectiveness < Teaching methods < Teaching content < Teaching attitude. Both teaching content and teaching effectiveness have shown an impact on the overall satisfaction (P<0.05). By comparing the standard partial regression coefficients

the result is: β' content > β' effectiveness. Conclusions　Clinical Medical students' overall evaluation on the public health courses offered by this university was good. Teaching effectiveness and teaching methods still need improvement. Teaching contents are the most influential factor of overall teaching satisfaction

followed by teaching effectiveness.