MOTIVATIONS FOR STUDYING DENTISTRY AND DENTAL COLLEGE PREFERENCE AMONG RAS AL KHAIMAH MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES UNIVERSITY( RAKCODS) STUDENTS
Gender as well was not a factor which was systematically chosen for the dental career. 70 female students had a score of( 20.86) and SD( 6.7), while the 40 males had a score of( 21.6) and SD( 6.0) and p-value( 0.549). The students were grouped into freshly registered students, namely the( 16-20) year old group and late registered students, namely above( 20) years of age and tested against the score of factors; the study revealed that the mean of score of the 99 fresh students was( 21.3), SD( 6.2), while for the elder( late) group( 11 students) the score was( 19.9), SD( 8.5) and p-value 0.507. The high school curriculum variable was recorded as Arabic-based curricula and others. Again, the study showed no difference between the score of factors to choose dentistry as a career. About
62 students selecting the Arabic curricula made an average of score( 21.45), SD( 6.5), while 48 students coming from other background curricula made an average of( 20.6), SD( 6.3) with p-value 0.448. However, the variables were also directly correlated with the gender using Chi-Square Test. The test yielded three significant correlations( Table 3). Treatment and improvement of peoples’ oral health was considered as an important factor by female respondents more than males( p = 0.022). On the other hand, the male respondents indicated that dentistry has high income and pays better than other jobs, so these were considered as important factors by higher percentages than females( p = 0.033 and p < 0.001) respectively.
Table 3. The dental career factors demonstrating significant gender differences
Variable Gender(%) Chi-Square Test
Have interest to treat people & improve their oral health Female( 81.4) Male( 60.0)
Dentistry has high-level income of practice Female( 51.4) Male( 75.0)
Dentistry pays better than other job options available to me Female( 28.6) Male( 65.0) p = 0.022
p = 0.033
p < 0.001
5. Discussion Online questionnaires have many advantages, such as ease of distribution, lack of human errors in entering data, control of the research timing and instant generation of results. However, they have a reasonably low response rate. The current study reveals a response rate of 67 %, which is relatively superior to many published articles, which used paper based questionnaires 5, 16. The response percentage was calculated out of the total number of officially registered students holding a University ID number. Nevertheless, according to the college attendance register, a small percentage of the first year students(< 6 %) had never attended any classes, at least up to the time of deactivation of the online questionnaire link and this would reduce the response rate to some extent. It is worth mentioning that in this study there were no missing data, double answered questions or incomplete responses. In fact responses with those discrepancies were rejected by the system and not included in the total number of respondents. It is probably a misleading approach to include all academic years of a program in a survey probing motivations for the choice of a dental career. This would probably provide deceptive outcomes. A factor that would make a student enroll in dentistry today might change over subsequent academic years. It is not unusual for a candidate to develop a different attitude towards the profession in his / her later years of study. This is quite evident in a previous study that included all students from year one to year five 13. The current study included two academic years: year one( fresh students) and year two( just finished year one). The two classes form 50 % of the total number of RAKCODS students. In the present study the number of female( 63.6 %) students exceeded the males( 36.4 %). This trend has been noticed in many countries including Brazil 6, United States 9 and Denmark 10, and stirred debate about feminization of dentistry 18. The top three main motivations of the participants towards enrolling in the dental career were“ treatment of people and improvement of their oral health( 73.6 %)”,“ dental practice is a combination of hand skills and knowledge( 66.4 %)” and“ dental profession provides option to be self-employed( 61.8 %)”. Interestingly, the females demonstrated higher motivation towards community services compared to the males. Helping people and improving of oral health( Altruistic motives) variable were rated as the most important factor by the female students and revealed a statistically significant difference( p = 0.022). This finding is in agreement with several previous reports 9, 10, 18. Dentistry is a profession which inspires knowledge and hand skills; therefore, it is of no surprise to see considerable participants opting for dentistry as their future career. On the contrary, Brand and others 7 explored the motives of the first year dental students in the University of Sydney, but noticed that skills, science and knowledge were the least important motives among the surveyed
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