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Students’ motivation to study dentistry in Malaysia: an analysis using confirmatory factor analysis

Overview of attention for article published in Human Resources for Health, June 2015
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Title
Students’ motivation to study dentistry in Malaysia: an analysis using confirmatory factor analysis
Published in
Human Resources for Health, June 2015
DOI 10.1186/s12960-015-0040-4
Pubmed ID
Authors

Muhd Firdaus Che Musa, Eduardo Bernabé, Jennifer E Gallagher

Abstract

Malaysia has experienced a significant expansion of dental schools over the past decade. Research into students' motivation may inform recruitment and retention of the future dental workforce. The objectives of this study were to explore students' motivation to study dentistry and whether that motivation varied by students' and school characteristics. All 530 final-year students in 11 dental schools (6 public and 5 private) in Malaysia were invited to participate at the end of 2013. The self-administered questionnaire, developed at King's College London, collected information on students' motivation to study dentistry and demographic background. Responses on students' motivation were collected using five-point ordinal scales. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to evaluate the underlying structure of students' motivation to study dentistry. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to compare factor scores for overall motivation and sub-domains by students' and school characteristics. Three hundred and fifty-six final-year students in eight schools (all public and two private) participated in the survey, representing an 83% response rate for these schools and 67% of all final-year students nationally. The majority of participants were 24 years old (47%), female (70%), Malay (56%) and from middle-income families (41%) and public schools (78%). CFA supported a model with five first-order factors (professional job, healthcare and people, academic, careers advising and family and friends) which were linked to a single second-order factor representing overall students' motivation. Academic factors and healthcare and people had the highest standardized factor loadings (0.90 and 0.71, respectively), suggesting they were the main motivation to study dentistry. MANOVA showed that students from private schools had higher scores for healthcare and people than those in public schools whereas Malay students had lower scores for family and friends than those from minority ethnic groups. No differences were found by age, sex, family income and school type. Using CFA, this study shows that academic factors were the main motivation to study dentistry in this group of Malaysian students. There were also variations in students' motivation by students' ethnicity and school sector but not by other factors.

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Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 69 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 69 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 12 17%
Student > Ph. D. Student 7 10%
Student > Bachelor 6 9%
Lecturer 5 7%
Researcher 4 6%
Other 14 20%
Unknown 21 30%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 21 30%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 4 6%
Social Sciences 4 6%
Arts and Humanities 3 4%
Nursing and Health Professions 2 3%
Other 13 19%
Unknown 22 32%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 12 June 2015.
All research outputs
#17,286,379
of 25,374,647 outputs
Outputs from Human Resources for Health
#1,146
of 1,261 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#166,479
of 278,770 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Human Resources for Health
#32
of 32 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,374,647 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 21st percentile – i.e., 21% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,261 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 13.3. This one is in the 3rd percentile – i.e., 3% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 278,770 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 31st percentile – i.e., 31% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 32 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 1st percentile – i.e., 1% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.