Specialty choice of medical students in India

The objectives of this study are to investigate undergraduate medical students' attitudes towards different specialties and to investigate whether there are any differences between the attitudes of students of different sex and different socio-economic background. The sample consisted of 692 final-year students from 11 medical colleges in India. Scale values were worked out to find out the actual distance between students' attitudes. Sex differences were observed in the attitude towards surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology, orthopaedics, microbiology, social and preventive medicine and anatomy. There were no statistically significant differences between the attitudes of students from different socio-economic backgrounds.