Development and validation of the dentists' values scale

Abstract

During the yearly dental school admissions process, decision makers focus on determining which applicants will become competent practitioners. As such, the admissions procedure may benefit from including a reliable, valid tool that can assist in predicting the degree to which applicants are likely to become successful students and practitioners. One factor that is related to success in the dental profession is values. (Values are encompassed by the concept of professionalism, which is deemed a crucial element of dental success; Chamberlain, Catano, & Cunningham, 2005). However, systematic research on the values of dentists is lacking. Therefore, we developed a measure of dentists' values and validated it using a sample of Canadian dentists. Exploratory factor analysis results indicated 5 factors: Altruism, Personal Satisfaction, Conscientiousness, Quality of Life, and Professional Status. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated the 5-factor model was a good fit. We also administered the measure to dental students to determine the relationship between dentist and student values. For the values of Altruism and Professional Status, t-tests suggested that there were no differences between the two groups.