MBTI, Personality and Specialty Decisions - AAMC's member profile

Careers in Medicine
Research Work Session:
MBTI, Personality and
Specialty Decisions
George V. Richard, Ph.D.
Anita Navarro, M.Ed.
November 2, 20112

Facilitating Personality Research
For today…
• Review of Background/Update
• Summary of Survey
• Update on MBTI and Specialty Choice Group

Background
• AAMC Annual Meeting, San Antonio, 2008
• CiM PDC, Savannah, 2009
• AAMC Annual Meeting, Boston, 2009
• AAMC Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, 2010
• Conducting Research on the MBTI, Personality &
Careers in Medicine.
– Discussed interest in research related to the MBTI
and career decision-making.
– Identified interested individuals
– Defined some possible research question(s)
– Identified next steps

More Progress
•CiM/GSA PDC 2011, Miami Beach
• Work session where three groups convened to work
on
– MBTI/Personality Use Inventory
– MBTI/Specialty Choice updating research
– Open topics
•Annual Meeting 2011, Denver
• MBTI/Specialty Choice group
– Worked on devising a concrete plan
• Open topics
– to select a topic and construct a plan

Survey on Medical School Use of
MBTI
Goal of Survey
• Obtain a baseline of efforts to understand
how to improve CiM’s resources for working
with students on personality as part of their
career decisions.
• Conducted on-line with CiM liaisons between
October 28 and December 9, 2011.
• 86 U.S., Canadian, and Osteopathic schools
participated for a response rate of 63%.

Use of Personality in Working
with Medical Students
• 32% of respondents do not work with students
on personality
• 61% of respondents use the MBTI
• 8% use the Keirsey Temperament Sorter
• 8% use other assessments
• 57% have a budget that supports the use of
MBTI at their school
• 87% of those using MBTI have a certified
interpreter in place

Ways in which Medical Schools
Use the MBTI
Table 1: Responses and rates for MBTI uses
Understanding learning/study styles 84.1%
Advising for careers/specialties 65.9%
Adapting to one's environment 54.5%
Making career decisions 52.3%
Coaching students 43.2%
Exploring diversity/differences 43.2%

Program Evaluation Related to
MBTI
Table 2: Selected responses based on considerations about program evaluation
Students were not provided enough information initially and were not engaged in the process
before they took the instrument; many admitted to answering questions at random. When given
the opportunity to verify their type, almost half said their type was different from what the
instrument reported.
We need to shorten session at orientation, explain applicability and follow up more regularly to
make the expense worthwhile.
Many students comment that they now understand why they are having trouble, why their notes
aren't useful, etc. Also, many like the info about communicating with patients and families, and
how personality comes into play here. Sometimes they say that I should require this of all
students, but I don't really have the money to do this...
Students like it. They would prefer to only hear about how it relates to them personally, and
often get bored with hearing about traits that they don't have. We tell them they should
understand how everyone can work together...sometimes it helps!

General Impressions of the MBTI
Table 3: Summary of liaisons’ impressions
•Thirty-three comments supported the usefulness of the MBTI in working with
students with qualifications
•Three commented on it not being useful
•Students have mixed impressions
•Concern for stereotyping and appropriate use
•Other considerations
•Cost
•Availability of a certified or qualified interpreter
•Utility outside specialty choice
•Openness to the process of self assessment

Research and the MBTI
• The 79% of respondents indicated an interest in
researching MBTI and career development
• 58% of those interested do not have data that
could be shared
• For those who indicated a willingness (11
schools) to share data, most have retrospective
data for at least one to four years.

Conclusions & Implications
• The MBTI is the most utilized assessment for
personality by medical schools for learning
styles, advising and career development
activities.
• Impressions about its usefulness are mixed.
• Schools are interested in research.
• CiM staff will continue to strive to improve the
resources related to using that tool.

Open Topics Group
• Open topics group met last annual meeting
• Goal of 2012 session
o to select a topic(s) and construct a plan
• Divided into groups by interest area and sent
assignments out to participants
• On hold
• Regroup at PDC 2013

MBTI/Specialty Choice Group Update
• Accomplishments to date
• Identified need to validate CiM data first
– Conference calls, email exchanges
– Identified willing medical schools
– Determined that AAMC should submit IRB first
• Two separate IRB requests planned
– Data validation first
– Specialty choice research based on results of
data validation project
• Data validation IRB submitted
– Received exempt status
– Approved Waiver of Informed Consent

MBTI/Specialty Choice Group Update
• Next steps
• Discuss approach
– Obtain identified data from participating
schools
– Obtain deidentified data from other
interested schools (?)
• Determine method for supporting schools’
approval process
• Obtain data and conduct analyses