Abstract
A lack of physician scientists as well as a high female dropout rate from academic medicine and basic life sciences is a concern in many countries. The current study analyzes academic career intentions within a sample of recent doctoral graduates from medicine and basic life sciences (N = 1109), focusing on research self-efficacy beliefs as explanatory variable of gender and disciplinary differences. To ensure that differences in research self-efficacy could not be attributed solely to objective scientific performance, we controlled for number of publications and dissertation grade. The results of multivariate analyses pointed to a strong and significant association between research self-efficacy and academic career intentions (ß = 0.49, p<0.001). The lower academic career intentions of medical doctoral graduates were no longer significant when controlling for research self-efficacy. Within the field of medicine, female doctoral graduates expressed lower research self-efficacy beliefs and academic career intentions. When controlling for research self-efficacy, the correlation between gender and academic career intention was no longer significant. In contrast, no gender differences were found within the basic life sciences with respect to neither academic career intentions nor research self-efficacy.
Highlights
As with other countries, a lack of physician scientists [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]), as well as female scientists in medicine and basic life sciences in particular [8,9,10], is of concern in Germany
Field and gender differences were apparent in performance variables in that medical doctoral graduates had published fewer first and co-author articles, and that female doctoral graduates had published significantly fewer articles as a first and co-author in both medicine and life sciences
This was true for medicine: 9 percent of male medical graduates received a grade of summa cum laude opposed to 6 percent of females
Summary
A lack of physician scientists [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]), as well as female scientists in medicine and basic life sciences in particular [8,9,10], is of concern in Germany. Empirical studies in the educational field find self-efficacy beliefs to be positively correlated with achievement motivation, persistence [38, 39] and academic performance [40,41,42,43]. An exception is the study by Gibbs and colleagues [18], whose results, may be influenced by their heterogeneous group of participants, who were recruited from diverse channels. Against the empirical evidence about (research) selfefficacy and its relation to achievement motivation, it is hypothesized that research self-efficacy beliefs are significantly related to academic career intentions when controlling for objective scientific performance: Hypothesis 1. Research self-efficacy beliefs are, beyond objective scientific performance (publications, grade of the doctorate), significantly related to academic career intentions in doctoral graduates from medicine and basic life sciences
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