Variables influencing career choices of graduates of informatics programs funded by the National Library of Medicine.

Graduates of the National Library of Medicine-supported Medical Informatics (MI) training programs were studied to determine the variables influencing their choices of an academic or nonacademic career. More than 60% of the available population of trainees (171 of 272) were studied in 1986 and four of the nine variables measured by means of a questionnaire were significant in differentiating the choices the students made. The training programs located in a private institution, with the majority of the faculty from the medical school and with a small number of trainees who already had the M.D. or Ph.D. degree, generated the highest proportion of graduates seeking academic careers. Discriminant analysis was done to determine whether a combination of variables would discriminate between those who chose academic careers and those who did not. It indicated that the status of the institution (public or private); the entry degree of the trainee; and the productivity of the training program faculty were sufficient to correctly classify 75.3% (67 of 89) of the students who chose academics and 71.9% (59 of 82) of those who did not. There is now a baseline of data that can be used in future studies.