Medical and business are one of the most popular majors among students, and both fields require intensive training to reach certain level of expertise. During the development of professionalism, goal can become a crucial role in psychological impetus. The purpose of this study is to compare goal contents, goal characteristics, and effect of goal characteristics on student’s major satisfaction between medical and business.
A total of 193 undergraduate students (97 medical students, 96 business students) answered survey questions including goal contents, goal characteristics (goal autonomy, goal attainability, social value of goal) and satisfaction on their majors. Qualitative analysis of goal contents and quantitative analysis of goal characteristics, and their effects on student major satisfaction were performed.
Goal content analysis showed percentage of social concern goal was higher in medical students (25.8%) than business students (6.3%), whereas percentage of wealth goal was higher business students (24.0%) than medical students (3.1%). Among goal characteristics, goal attainability and social value of goal were higher in medical students than business students. In both groups, social value of goal was significantly predict major satisfaction.
Goal contents and goal characteristics are different between medical and business students. Curriculum and educational interventions that concerning students’ goal and developing programs to enhance students’ social value of goal is necessary.
Goal is a critical psychological impetus of the continual development of professionalism in a field [
Reflecting such importance, goal research is being carried out in education field, but most of which consists of achievement goal orientation related studies [
GCT categorized goal contents into two main dimensions of intrinsic goal and extrinsic goal. Intrinsic goal refers to internally oriented goals such as self-growing goal, relational goal, help-seeking goal or health [
This study compared medical students’ goal contents and goal characteristics with business students. Medical and business majors require high admission grade and tuition, and these are one of the most popular majors among students. When considering the goal contents matter, the business major’s wealth-oriented nature has given weight to its image as a representative major of extrinsic goal pursuit. As it has been disclosed in experiments of Kasser & Ahuvia [
Identifying the goal contents of medical students precisely is of significance in terms of human resource management and medical education. The reality that one has to face in the course of medical college life may deteriorate major satisfaction, supposing the situational orientation takes a different turn from one’s ideal. Thus the verification experimental design of medical students’ goal characteristics and their relationship with major satisfaction can be exploited as a basic data for medical college educational program. Research question of this study is as follows:
(1) What are the goal contents of medical students and business students?
(2) What are the goal characteristics (goal autonomy, goal attainability, social value of goal) of medical students and business students?
(3) What are the effects of medical students’ and business students’ goal characteristics on their major satisfaction?
Participants of this study were 193 undergraduate students (97 medical students, 96 business students) are recruited from two universities in Seoul and Suwon, South Korea. The mean age of medical students was 19.60 (standard deviation [SD], 2.78), consisting of 68 males (70%) and 29 females (12%). The mean age of business students was 20.57 (SD, 2.26), consisting of 61 males (64%) and 35 females (36%).
The survey questionnaire is comprised of three main parts. Demographics (i.e., major, age, gender) and satisfaction of major was measured in the first section. Major satisfaction was measured through a single question of “Are you satisfied with your current major?” The second section asked participants to write down their goals (i.e., “What is your life goal?”) and reasons or events that affected setting his or her goal (i.e., “Please write the reasons or critical events that have an influence on setting a goal you wrote”). The third part consisted of items about goal characteristics (i.e., goal autonomy, goal attainability, social value of goal) of one’s own life goal that was written in the first part. For all measures, a 5-point Likert-type scale was used (1=not at all, 3=neutral, 5=extremely).
Five items adopted from the scale of goal autonomy in the Goal Questionnaire for Engineering Experts [
Participants’ goal attainability was assessed by five items that were adopted from the scale of goal attainability in Goal Questionnaire for Engineering Experts [
Participants responded to how much they were concerned with the society and others’ benefits beyond their own advantages when setting and pursuing their goals. The items were adopted from the Social concern scale that was developed by Shin et al., 2014 [
In the first phase of the data driven analysis, students’ descriptions of their life goal were identified. Each life goal was categorized into goal contents classification based on the descriptions of goals and the reasons or critical events related in the setting the goal [
As a result of goal contents analyses by major, goal contents are classified as happiness, social concern, self-growth, fame, wealth, well-being, health, social relations, and etc. The following are examples in each category. In the case of happiness, “living a happy life,” “leading a cheerful life,” “keep smiling,” “living a fun life” were included. Social concern of goal included example such as “becoming a contributive intellectual,” “human welfare improvement,” and “doing volunteer work for others.” Self-growth included “living a developing life,” “never wasting a day,” “self-formation and self-realization,” “becoming better than who I was yesterday.” Fame goal included “gaining recognition,” “being acknowledged like a unique brand image,” “living a respectable life,” “achieving fame and prestige.” In the wealth section, people included material value-oriented lists such as “coining money,” “becoming rich,” “succeeding in business,” and “financially holding a higher position over others.” Well-being example was “retaining the peaceful state of mind,” and health example was “good health and long life.” Social relation goal included the enhancement of personal connections, such as “getting a position at military governmental organizations.” Lastly, “etc” was made for examples outside specific categories, such as simply “becoming a doctor” or “human.”
Statistical analysis was operated on the SPSS version 18.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, USA), through methods of descriptive statistics, correlation, Mann-Whitney U test and hierarchical linear regression. In the case of regression, age and gender were processed in the first equation, and the three goal characteristics in the second equation to predict major satisfaction. All the analyses were conducted by the standard of two-tailed and significance level of 5%.
Percentages of each goal contents were presented in
Results from hierarchical regression analyses of medical students are presented in
Results from hierarchical regression analyses of business students are presented in
Goal contents that differed by major appeared to be social concerns of goal and wealth. The percentage of social concerns of goal was higher in medical students. On the other hand, the percentage of wealth pursuit was higher in business students. This result is a positive answer to the society’s concern about whether medical students truly value human-centered treatment rather than the prestigious social authority or wealth that the profession generally brings about. Wealth-oriented medical students showed a low percentage and most of the goal contents were related to intrinsic goals such as social concerns and self-growth. In contrast, business students showed a tendency towards wealth-oriented goals. This result equals with former research in which the major characteristics of business led to wealth pursuit [
Medical students showed higher major satisfaction of score 4 or higher on average. Considering the concerns on medical students’ high stress level and its convertsion to low major satisfaction [
Examination upon the relationship between goal characteristics and major satisfaction has revealed that goal attainability and social values may significantly predict major satisfaction of medical students. This result indicates that in order to heighten medical students’ major satisfaction, a plan that grasps the goal contents and elevate goal attainability is effective in enhancing major satisfaction [
There are several limitations of this study and suggestions for future research. Firstly, the recruitment group’s goal contents were comprehended through surveys not interviews, a measure that carries limitation in in-depth study. In this study, questions on the reasons for setting certain goals were included for understanding the goal thoroughly, but still in-depth understanding of the goal contents is not sufficient. This research may act as a foundational research for future study of qualitative research methods such as interviewing. Second, there could be other important goal characteristics that provide a meaningful explanation for major satisfaction. For example, goal commitment may also be linked closely to major satisfaction. This research has examined three goal characteristics under the theoretical framework of GCT, but it is necessary future research should consider a diversity of goal characteristics. Third, this study only include two disciplines of medical and business. Since insufficient level of research has been done for comparing goals in these two fields, this study works as foundation for revealing goal difference between the fields. However, further studies should be performed to compare the goal of majors that are related to medicine (e.g., pharmacy, nursing) and not related to medicine (e.g., art, engineering). It would provide a greater comprehensive picture to suit the dynamics of the modern education. Lastly, multiple psychological variables related to choosing a major, goal contents and goal characteristics were not included. Since many factors such as family background, admission grade, and individual aptitude affect the choice on one’s major and goal, future study should be engaging in a wider variety of psychological variables and their relationship with goal contents and goal characteristics.
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This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean Government (NRF-2013S1A3A2055007).
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Descriptions of the Goal Contents
Category | Medical (n=97) | Business (n=96) | Total (N=193) |
---|---|---|---|
Happiness | 27 (27.8) | 32 (33.3) | 59 (31.1) |
Self-growth | 27 (27.8) | 24 (25.0) | 51 (26.8) |
Social concern | 25 (25.8) | 6 (6.3) | 31 (16.3) |
Fame | 7 (7.2) | 8 (8.3) | 15 (7.9) |
Wealth | 3 (3.1) | 23 (24.0) | 26 (13.7) |
Well-being | 1 (1.0) | 1 (1.0) | 2 (1.1) |
Health | 1 (1.0) | 0 | 1 (0.5) |
Social relations | 0 | 2 (2.1) | 2 (1.1) |
Etc | 3 (3.1) | 0 | 3 (1.6) |
Missing | 3 (3.1) | 0 | 3 (1.5) |
Total | 97 (100.0) | 96 (100.0) | 193 (100.0) |
Data are presented as number (%).
Descriptive Statistics And Correlations Of The Goal Characteristics And Major Satisfaction
Variable | Median |
1st–3rd quartile |
U | Correlations |
|||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Medical | Business | Medical | Business | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | ||
Goal characteristic | |||||||||
1. Goal autonomy | 4.60 | 4.40 | 4.00–5.00 | 4.00–5.00 | 4,328.50 |
- | 0.65 |
0.13 |
0.23 |
2. Goal attainability | 4.20 | 4.00 | 4.00–4.80 | 3.65–4.60 | 3,596.50 |
0.65 |
- | 0.32 |
0.26 |
3. Social value of goal | 4.20 | 3.40 | 3.80–4.70 | 2.85–4.00 | 2,198.00 |
0.43 |
0.49 |
- | 0.32 |
4. Major satisfaction | 4.00 | 4.00 | 4.00–5.00 | 3.00–4.00 | 2,962.50 |
0.29 |
0.45 |
0.40 |
- |
Values below diagonal were from medical students, above diagonal were from business students.
Non-significant,
p<0.05,
p<0.01,
p<0.001.
Effects of Goal Characteristics on Major Satisfaction in Medical Students
R2 | ΔR2 | β | B | SE | t | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Gender | 0.02 |
0.00 |
-0.01 | -0.02 | 0.18 | 0.13 |
Age | -0.04 | -0.01 | 0.03 | 0.36 |
|||
2 | Gender | 0.21 |
0.21 |
0.06 | 0.13 | 0.16 | 0.82 |
Age | -0.02 | -0.01 | 0.03 | 0.20 |
|||
Goal autonomy | -0.07 | -0.10 | 0.18 | 0.54 |
|||
Goal attainability | 0.39 | 0.55 | 0.18 | 3.06 |
|||
Social value of goal | 0.24 | 0.30 | 0.13 | 2.27 |
β: Standardized coefficient, B: Unstandardized coefficient, SE: Standardized error.
Non-significant,
p<0.05,
p<0.01,
p<0.001.
Effects of Goal Characteristics on Major Satisfaction in Business Students
R2 | ΔR2 | β | B | SE | t | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Gender | 0.01 |
0.01 |
-0.03 | -0.05 | 0.19 | 0.25 |
Age | 0.10 | 0.04 | 0.04 | 0.84 |
|||
2 | Gender | 0.10 |
0.10 |
-0.02 | -0.03 | 0.18 | 0.18 |
Age | 0.10 | 0.02 | 0.04 | 0.48 |
|||
Goal autonomy | 0.15 | 0.18 | 0.16 | 1.12 |
|||
Goal attainability | 0.08 | 0.10 | 0.18 | 0.55 |
|||
Social value of goal | 0.27 | 0.31 | 0.12 | 2.58 |
β: Standardized coefficient, B: Unstandardized coefficient, SE: Standardized error.
Non-significant,
p<0.05,
p<0.001.