Specialty choice: development of a questionnaire

Determination of factors which influence medical students' choice of a specialty is potentially important for decisions regarding medical school curricular changes that might influence students' specialty choice. Beginning in 1988, we developed and annually revised a specialty choice questionnaire which was administered to the senior class at the Medical College of Georgia School of Medicine from 1988 to 1991. This paper presents reliability and validity data regarding the questionnaire. Validation procedures involved driving a multiple discriminant function to determine the significance of relationships between a variable and choice of a primary care (PC) or non-primary care (NPC) specialty. Structure coefficients for the multiple discriminant functions that were statistically and practically significant were desire for longitudinal patient care opportunities and desire for monetary rewards. Estimates of internal consistency were derived using Cronbach's alpha. Cronbach's alpha coefficients for this item set were 0.71, 0.59 and 0.46 for 1988, 1989 and 1990 respectively. Test-retest coefficients for the 1991 12-item questionnaire ranged from 0.51 to 0.81.