The rapid pace of scientific discovery has catalyzed the need for medical students to be able to find and assess new information. The knowledge required for physicians' skillful practice will change of the course of their careers, and, to keep up, they must be able to recognized their deficiencies, search for new knowledge, and critically evaluate new research as they care for their patients. Contemporary medical educators have embraced the cultivation of self-directed learning styles in medical students as one way to address their need to continue learning throughout their practice lifetimes. The purpose of this research was to explore the assessment of self-directed learning readiness within the holistic evaluation of medical students' knowledge and skills. This study used a multiple regression analysis to examine the extent to which several variables, all conventionally used methods of evaluating medical students, predicted their self-directed learning readiness in the final semester prior to their graduation. Seventy-seven fourth-year medical students at a private southeastern medical school participated in this study (61% response rate), completed a survey to measure their tendencies for self-directed learning, and consented to the release of their academic records from the institution. The findings of this study suggested that the participants were strong students and who scored highly on the Self-Directed Learning Readiness Scale. The statistical analysis revealed no impressive individual differences in participants' self-directed learning readiness a function of any of the independent variables considered. The strongest predictors of any component of medical students' self-directed learning readiness were faculty evaluations of their performance on various clerkship rotations. The results of this analysis suggest that, despite the multiple evaluation methods conventionally used in medical education, the assortment considered in this study capture students' tendencies for self-directedness only vaguely at best; subject matter experts (faculty) with human judgment about how well trainees work in a clinical environment appear to have the strongest sense of how self-directed their supervisees are. To further clarify the relationship between currently used assessment techniques and medical students' self-directedness, future research could repeat this study on subsequent classes or expand across a range of institutions. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]