Abstract
BackgroundFollow-up studies of former students are an efficient way to organize the entire process of professional training and curriculum evaluation. The aim of this study was to identify professional profile subgroups based on job-related variables in a sample of former students of a Brazilian public dental school.MethodsA web-based password-protected questionnaire was sent to 633 registered dentists who graduated from the Federal University of Goias between 1988 and 2007. Job-related information was retrieved from 14 closed questions, on subjects such as gender, occupational routine, training, profits, income status, and self-perception of professional career, generating an automatic database for analysis. The two-step cluster method was used for dividing dentists into groups on the basis of minimal within-group and maximal between-group variation, using job-related variables to represent attributes upon which the clustering was based.ResultsThere were 322 respondents (50.9%), predominantly female (64.9%) and the mean age was 34 years (SD = 6.0). The automatic selection of an optimal number of clusters included 289 cases (89.8%) in 3 natural clusters. Clusters 1, 2 and 3 included 52.2%, 30.8% and 17.0% of the sample respectively. Interpretation of within-group rank of variable importance for cluster segmentation resulted in the following characterization of clusters: Cluster 1 - specialist dentists with higher profits and positive views of the profession; Cluster 2 - general dental practitioners in small cities; Cluster 3 - underpaid and less motivated dentists with negative views of the profession. Male dentists were predominant in cluster 1 and females in cluster 3. One-way Anova showed that age and time since graduation were significantly lower in Cluster 2 (P < 0.001). Alternative solutions with 4 and 5 clusters revealed specific discrimination of Cluster 1 by gender and dental education professionals.ConclusionsCluster analysis was a valuable method for identifying natural grouping with relatively homogeneous cases, providing potentially meaningful information for professional orientation in dentistry in a variety of professional situations and environments.
Highlights
Identifying professional profiles in follow-up studies of former students is an efficient way to organize the entire process of professional training and curriculum evaluation of an educational institution
The recent Brazilian national curriculum guidelines for university dental courses are consistent with public health policies, which emphasize the need for general dental practitioners focused on primary oral health care, with the ability to cooperate across different professional disciplines
In Brazil, dental care assistance is provided in two ways: (1) a public health system focused on primary health attention, and (2) private dental care based on professional cooperatives and dental insurance companies, or fee-for-service health care
Summary
Identifying professional profiles in follow-up studies of former students is an efficient way to organize the entire process of professional training and curriculum evaluation of an educational institution. The recent Brazilian national curriculum guidelines for university dental courses are consistent with public health policies, which emphasize the need for general dental practitioners focused on primary oral health care, with the ability to cooperate across different professional disciplines. In Brazil, dental care assistance is provided in two ways: (1) a public health system focused on primary health attention, and (2) private dental care based on professional cooperatives and dental insurance companies, or fee-for-service health care. The aim of this study was to identify professional profile subgroups based on job-related variables in a sample of former students of a Brazilian public dental school
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