Psychosocial Characteristics of Female Students in the Allied Health and Medical Colleges: Psychometrics of the Measures and Personality Profiles

Abstract

For the purpose of developing a comprehensive assessment method of predicting academic and professional success among health professions' students, a set of 12 psychosocial measures were administered and their psychometric properties were examined. Participants were 141 female allied health and 71 female medical students. Alpha and test-retest reliabilities and construct and concurrent validities of the measures were studied, and most of the measures were found to have satisfactory psychometric properties. Comparisons were also made between medical and allied health sciences students using the 12 psychosocial measures. Allied health students scored higher on loneliness, anxiety, depression, and scored lower on perception of general health and perception of their fathers as compared to medical students. Implications of the findings for development of prediction models of academic and professional performance are discussed.