The present study is an investigation of motives students have for wishing to become dentists. The study population comprised 85 first year dental students of the class of 1992 at the University of Sydney. A questionnaire which sought information on student demography, attitudes to dentistry, and motive rankings was administered. Demographic findings indicated that the majority of students came from countries in the Pacific rim and the male/female ratio was 62 to 38 per cent. Responses to the attitude questionnaire showed that Australian student motives for becoming dentists did not differ from those of students in other countries. The most predominant of these motives was to serve others, to become independent, to enjoy job satisfaction, and to acquire financial security. The least important motives were manual and communication skills, science and knowledge, and surprisingly, status and prestige. To attribute meaning and value to these motives, however, reflects inconsistencies which are expressed as contradictions between motive categories, between items within categories, and between motive categories and motive rankings. When one considers the basis upon which career decisions are made, disparity in the findings may be attributable to a decision-making process that rests on subjective rather than objective criteria.

Choosing Dentistry as a career ‐ A profile of entering students (1992) to the University of Sydney, Australia

A Maximizing Model of Occupational Decision‐Making

Decline of ethics and the rise of cynicism in dental school.

Meaning and career decision-making

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972, this paper examines the relationship between teaching plans and actually embarking on a teaching career. Results show that almost half the NLS respondents holding teaching positions in 1979 did not report teaching plans in high school, whereas three-fourths of the seniors who planned to teach were not teaching 7 years after high school graduation. Discriminant analysis is used to identify a set of background characteristics, demographic traits, and academic ability measures that distinguish different paths toward, into, and away from a career in teaching. Theoretical and policy implications of the findings are discussed.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/1162360

Recruitment to School Teaching: The Relationship Between High School Plans and Early Adult Attainments

Self-recruitment to dentistry provides an excellent case of the purposive or negotiated nature of occupational choice, especially of the skilled and professional occupations. Choices were made as compromises between reward preferences and expectancies of access to specific occupations; both of these career perspectives were developed with reference to familial occupational history, especially the occupational status of the father. Evidence is presented which indicates that dentistry was chosen because it combined high rewards with a reasonable degree of access; i.e., a minimax strategy was employed. Medicine, although possessing greater rewards, was rejected because of difficult access; while law, university teaching and accountancy, etc., were rejected because of perceived lower rewards. T nhe investigation described here developed from a longitudinal study of the evolution of the professional in dentistry which is concerned with the recruitment, socialization and initial careers of dental students. As a first phase of this research, the process of self-recruitment or the development of a commitment to study dentistry was studied with a sample of predental students. The present paper describes the development of an occupational choice; i.e., the decision to study dentistry.1 In this study two opposing approaches to occupational choice were considered. As an example of the first approach, Katz and Martin conceive of occupational choice as essentially adven-titio,us in nature.2 This approach characterizes occupational choice as nonrational, spontaneous and based upon situational pressures. Con-tingencies and influences external to the occupational world are seen as bringing about a fortuitous choice of one's life work. In their study of career choice among student nurses, Katz and Martin advance the thesis that ". the decisions which underlie embarkation on a nursing career for at least somte persons revolve around limited, situational contilngencies-in which the matter of nursing-as-career enters only tangentially or not at all. Thus, rational coInsiderations play a mlinlor or absenIt role. Examples of these contingencies are also given

The Strategy of Occupational Choice: Recruitment to Dentistry

Katz's criticism of our study presents an opportunity for a further clarification of the adventitious and purposive theories of occupational recruitment.1 Katz and Martin's study of nursing students takes a situational approach to occupational choice wherein a variety of external factors impinge on the choice.2 Our approach stresses the negotiated nature of career choice, which is seen as involving a compromise between occupational aspirations and opportunities. The purposive strategy assumes that choices are rational compromises between factors which of themselves are not necessarily rational. To the extent that there is a direct relation between means and ends we are justified in describing a choice-process as rational in the Weberian sense of the term. Adventitious choice of occupation would seem to be involved when careers are of temporary duration or subordinate to other considerations. Recruitment to female professions provides an excellent example of this phenomena as Davis and Olesen suggest: ". . . the middle-class girl's identification with and commitment to a career choice, when she makes one, is almost of necessity more ambivalent, conflict-laden and tentative than it is for her male counterpart."3 In predominantly male professions, such as medicine, dentistry, law, engineering, etc., choice can be more readily made in terms of "career relevant" considerations such as economic resources, cost of training, occupational preferences, and future rewards. In essence, Katz's methodological critique consists of a veritable barrage of imputed motives, projected shortcomings, and shibboleths. Katz criticizes us for use of attitudinal rather than behavioral data. However, we assume that mental activity is a form of social behavior which may for some purposes be a better predictor of social action than more visible forms of behavior. What Katz implies are academic expedients are in fact necessary elements of our research approach. For example, Katz suggests that predental students are not proper subjects for determining patterns of career choice. Yet, these students are at the closest point to the actual decision making, as represented by enrollment in a pre-professional curriculum. Dental students and practicing dentists are less preferable from a temporal standpoint since retrospective distortions may color their recollections to an unknown degree. Questions of who actually becomes a dentist and what are the behavior and attitudes of dental students are related but nevertheless separate issues. We are presently involved in a longitudinal study of the recruitment, socialization and career patterns of successive cohorts of dental students. Analysis of data on dental students at three schools indicate similar patterns of recruitment to that of the predental sample, lending further substantiation to the purposive theory of occupational choice for male professionals. While our attempt to show the influences of background factors such as social mobility, occupational exposure, etc., upon career-choice perspective is certainly open to further development, we leave it to interested readers to determine which theoretical position is more amenable to empirical testing. 1 Fred E. Katz, "A Comment on 'The Strategy of Occupational Choice: Recruitment to Dentistry,"' Social Forces, 45 (September 1966), p. 120; and Basil Sherlock and Alan Cohen, "The Strategy of Occupational Choice: Recruitment to Dentistry," Social Forces, 44 (March 1966), pp. 303-313. 2 Fred E. Katz and Harry W. Martin, "Career Choice Processes," Social Forces, 41 (December 1962), pp. 149-154. 3 Fred Davis and Virginia L. Olesen, "Initiation into a Women's Profession: Identity Problems in the Status Transition of Coed to Student Nurse," Sociometry, 26 (March 1963), p. 92.

Alan Cohen

Papers

The Strategy of Occupational Choice: Recruitment to Dentistry

Adventitious Versus Purposive Occupational Choice: A Reply to Katz