Assessing grit as a potential additional domain for dental students' selection

BACKGROUND Unhappiness, stress, and burnout will often lead to low academic performance among dental students. Perseverance and passion for long-term goal, known as grit, could overcome these despondent emotions. Our Study is looking at whether grit should be added as another domain during the interview process. The main objective of this study was to determine the association between grit and happiness among Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) dental students. In addition to that, the prevalence of gritty and happy dental students in UiTM was also determined and compared across the years of study. METHODS This was a cross-sectional study. Validated Short Grit Scale (Grit-S) and Pemberton Happiness Index (PHI) were distributed to all 409 undergraduate dental students in Faculty of Dentistry, UiTM through their class representatives. Scores for both grit and happiness were calculated according to their instruction manual. Data were analyzed using SPSS Version 25 by descriptive analysis, one-way ANOVA, independent t-test, Pearson's correlation, and linear regression. RESULT Two hundred sixty-six students returned the answered questionnaires, yielding a response rate of 65%. Prevalence of gritty and happy UiTM dental students was found to be at 79% and 41%, respectively. There was a significant positive fair linear correlation between grit and happiness among dental students (r = 0.225, p