The Relative Effectiveness of Personality and Academic Measures in the Prediction of Psychiatry or Nonpsychiatry Medical Specialty Preferences

The purpose of this study was to determine which of several personality, mood state, and academic measures were best able to predict an interest in psychiatry specialization among third-year medical students. Prior to and after the core psychiatry rotation, 340 students were given a battery of psychological tests. These measures, along with MCAT scores, psychiatry exam scores, and final rotation grades, were entered into three stepwise discriminant analyses to predict the students’ preference for either psychiatry or nonpsychiatry specialization. The results indicated that the mood state and anxiety measures were relatively more effective in predicting students’ preferences.