Assessing Dental Students’ Personalities at KAU Using Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) instrument is one of the most widely used personality assessments in the world. Besides its many applications in psychology and social sciences, MBTI has also been used to correlate personality types with attributes to certain majors and professions. In the literature, many professions used MBTI to predict the attitude, performance and effectiveness of both students and professionals in the fields of sales, engineering, medicine, music, and management.

In dentistry, several studies were conducted to assess personality types using MBTI for varied purposes.

We could not find any report about using MBTI in dental education in the Middle East to evaluate dental students’ personality types at their early years in the dental school in the area.

Objective:

The primary objective of this study is to identify the most common personality types among second- and third-year undergraduate dental students at King Abdulaziz University using MBTI.

Method:

Data for this study was collected through distributing (261) self-reported questionnaires to the second- and third-year students in February 2013. The questionnaire was divided into two parts; the first consists of MBTI-multiple choices questions and the second contains the demographic data with few open-ended questions. The response rate was 84.29%.

Results:

The most common personality types among dental students at KAU were ESTJ (15%), ISTJ (11.4%), ESFJ (10%), ISFJ (8.2%) and ENFJ (8.2%). 64% of those who had ESTJ personality type joined dentistry because it was their childhood dream, and 97% of them chose dentistry as their speciality as a first choice.

Conclusion:

Personality types of the first- and second- year dental students at KAU were nearly the same as dental students in other countries. By knowing the most common personality types among the dental students, faculty members may use that to develop the courses’ curriculum to choose the appropriate teaching methods.