Personality types of dental school applicants.

A questionnaire-based prospective study was carried out to measure the personality styles of students being interviewed for a place on the 1997/98 dental undergraduate course in Leeds, England. A total of 334 applicants attended for interview between November 1997 and March 1998, of which 311 anonymously and voluntarily completed a personality questionnaire. The Keirsey Temperament Sorter was used to measure the strength and nature of preferences along four dimensions: extroversion-introversion (E-I), sensing-intuition (S-N), thinking-feeling (T-F) and judging-perceiving (J-P). 4 personality types accounted for 79% of the students, 21% were divided among nine personality types with no type comprising more than 6.7% of the students. The remaining 3 possible personality types were not represented in this student population. Further comparisons revealed significant differences between this student sample and the general population in the judging-perceiving preference and also an intra-group gender difference with regard to the thinking-feeling (T-F) preference. A predominance of the S-J (sensing with judging) temperament type was also confirmed. Personality questionnaires may be a useful adjunct in the selection process of dental school applicants. The identification of a student's working and learning style preference has implications for both the dental undergraduate curriculum and the teaching methods employed by dental school staff.