To shed light on students’ perceptions and experiences, both quantitative and qualitative data were collected. Firstly, a self-developed questionnaire on students’ perceptions of the peer training sessions was administered, which contained items based on the Course Experience Questionnaire [
21] and the Experiences of Teaching and Learning Questionnaire [
22], and was supplemented with PAL-specific items. A total of 246 students (
N
Dir = 110,
N
Fac = 136) voluntarily rated 38 items on a five-point Likert scale. An exploratory factor analysis using the maximum likelihood method with orthogonal rotation was conducted. The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure was 0.92, which verified the sampling adequacy for this analysis. Also Bartlett’s test of sphericity, χ
2(378) = 3008.51,
p = 0.00, supported this factor analysis. A two-factor solution, explaining 41.15 % of the total variance, resulted from an iterative process in which items that loaded significantly on a factor (≥0.40) were included, and in which cross-loading items were removed until clearly distinctive factors appeared. To corroborate this solution, a new factor analysis on the remaining items was performed, which yielded an identical factor solution (Table
2 in Appendix). Factor 1 (32.15 %) clustered 16 items concerning the degree to which training was perceived to be good and generating diverse added values (‘
Good training and associated effects’). Factor 2 (9.00 %) contained 12 items relating to the degree to which students felt stimulated towards deep-level and critical learning (
‘Deep-
level and critical learning’). Both scales proved to have high internal consistency reliability scores (α
1 = 0.91, α
2 = 0.88) and showed a significant positive correlation (
r = 0.53). For both scales, the scores on all items related to the scale at hand were averaged, generating a scale-specific score on a five-point Likert scale. As was also the case for students’ clinical knowledge, a minimal participation rate of 6 out of 8 sessions was set out as criterion to be included in the subsequent analyses, generating a sample of 242 students (
N
Dir = 108,
N
Fac = 134).