Medical school financial support, faculty composition, and selection of family practice by medical students.

OBJECTIVE

This study examines the relationship between the choice of family practice by medical students in the 1986-1987 academic year and nine variables: ownership of school, weeks of required family medicine clinical training, age of school, and six variables related to medical school financial support and faculty composition.

METHODS

In multivariate analysis, three variables were found to be significantly related to choice of family practice (R2 = .441): weeks of required family medicine clinical training, proportion of faculty in family practice, and ownership of the school. A cluster analysis was performed using nine variables.

RESULTS

Along with the multivariate analysis, the resulting nine clusters demonstrate that additional variables need to be identified to explain the variance in percentage of students choosing family practice at different schools.