Predictors of rural practice location.

Attitudes toward the urban environment and place of origin were found to be the best predictors of an optometrist's practice location. When urbanism attitude and origin were scaled and placed in an equation to predict practice location, identification of an optometrist's practice location as rural or urban was highly accurate. Most important, scores on the equation were predictive of optometry students' future practice location. A single cutoff point on the equation correctly identified 79 percent of students who entered a rural or isolated small city practice and 81 percent of those who entered urban practice. The findings imply that optometry students most likely to enter rural practice can be objectively identified early in their training. If certain factors affecting choice of practice location are common to all health professions, the predictive equation presented here may be useful in the selection of students for rural practice in medicine.