An Exploration of Holland 's Theory for Use in the Selection of Dental Students.

Abstract

This study, which was intended to explore how well a supposedly superior measure of personality profile congruence could predict dental student performance and satisfaction, evolves into a study of Holland 's theory in an undifferentiated environment. That the dental school environment is undifferentiated is gleaned from prior research on the personality of dental students, from findings of negative associations between differentiation and dental school performance, and from data which suggests that male dental student profiles become less differentiated between their first and fourth years in dental school. In this undifferentiated environment, differentiation, when used as an independent variable in multiple regression equations that use predental GPA, DAT scores, and SDS raw scores as other independent variables, increased the adjusted explained variance in female clinical performance by 15.9% (p < .01), in female dental science performance by 16.5% (p < .01), and in male clinical performance by 2.5% (p < .01). Also, performance and satisfaction correlate in opposing directions, firstly with predental grade point average among female dental students, and secondly with DAT academic aptitude scores among male dental students. Moreover, both social and enterprising scores correlate positively (p < .05) with dental student satisfaction, and negatively but not significantly with most of the performance measures. (Thus, dental school appears to require abilities for performance which are not likely to be present in those who are most satisfied, and those who are most satisfied could have personality characteristics that are not compatible with optimal dental school performance.) Finally, the measure of profile congruence, the original focal point of this study, was significantly (p < .01) less useful than differentiation as a predictor of male clinical performance, female clinical performance, and female dental science performance. This measure was, moreover, significantly (p < .01) correlated (r (DBLTURN) .4) with differentiation, suggesting that differentiation might be a component of congruence in the undifferentiated dental school environment.