Teaching strategies used by precepters at a hospital-based family medicine center were investigated with seven preceptors who had previous teaching experiences and were board certified (six in family medicine). A third-year senior resident presented and discussed two patient cases to the preceptors in separate one-to-one teaching sessions, and the preceptors were told to treat the case as they would for a first-year resident. The senior resident constructed fictitious history, physical, examination, and treatment information for an acute patient problem (unambiguous case) and a chronic patient problem (ambiguous case). Certain points of information judged critical to diagnosis and treatment were withheld but would be given to the preceptor upon request. Preceptor views of the objectives for the teaching conference were also elicited. Preceptors were found to differ on the questioning strategies used; on each case the individual preceptors varied on the number of lower and higher order questions asked. The preceptors required more time and asked more questions for the acute problem case. However, the preceptors who asked many or few questions kept the same relative pattern for both cases. There appeared to be a correlation between use of treatment questions and preceptor effectiveness. Preceptor effectiveness was also measured by rank ordering by a faculty member based on pre-identified criteria. Based on these rankings, it is suggested that organization and specificity of preceptor goals may be a variable related to effectiveness. In debriefing sessions, preceptors requested more information on their teaching performance and expressed interest in learning about alternative teaching styles. (SW)