Personality and a new Canadian Dental Association interview : implications for dental student selection

Abstract

The present study examined the validity of a new Canadian Dental Association interview and a measure of personality in the prediction of clinical and academic performance in dental school. Using cross-sectional data, this study also explored mean level differences in dental students' personalities by year of dental school training and explored differences in personality between dental students and dentists. The results suggest that personality predicts performance in dental school. Also, the new interview did not predict performance in dental school and this was primarily due to the low number of student participants who had been selected with the use of the new interview. This study did not find support that there are mean level differences in dental students' personalities by year of dental school training, but there were some interesting mean level differences between dental students and dentists with respect to personality.