Motivational factors influencing career choices of Moroccan dental students.

This study aims to investigate the factors that motivate dental students to choose dentistry as a career. A questionnaire-based survey involving 752 dental students from the only two Moroccan dental schools was conducted between April and May 2011. The questionnaire was designed in terms of financial factors, human factors and working conditions factors. The students were asked to rank the career choices' set of questions on a five point Likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The internal reliability of the scale was investigated using Cronbach's alpha coefficient and validity was investigated by a confirmatory principal component analysis. Results indicate that dentistry has a noble function; the "desire to help people" and "job opportunities" determines career choice among Moroccan dental students. Another result that emerged from the study is that men were motivated by working conditions factors (p=0.025) while women were motivated by human factors (p=0.001). In brief, the results of the present study can be used by health policy makers to persuade students to pursue dentistry as a career.