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
146 STOMA . EDUJ ( 2016 ) 3 ( 2 )