مقايسه شخصيت و انگيزش دانشجويان دختر و پسر رشته هاي پزشكي، مهندسي و علوم انساني

A Comparison of Motivational Aspects and Personality Traits of Bovs and Girls Across Medical, Social and Engineering College Students

Introduction The purpose of this study was to compare the motivational aspects and personality traits among college students. Recent studies about Iranian college students have shown that there were serious problems with the fundamental components of human health such as happiness and wellbeings (Noori, Mokri, Mohammadi-Far, & Yazdani. 138 I). Many different assumptions could be made and a lot of explanations could be given for these problems. In this regard, Personality and motivational factors. as the most two important factors. could probably be the significant determining factors. Eysencks personality theory with three components of extroversion. introversion. and neuroticism and McInerney and Sinclairʹs theory of motivation with two components of intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation were selected as thc theoretical basis of this research. Eysenckʹs research on the three components of temperament including neuroticism, extroversion and introversion showed that neuroticism is a dimension that ranges from normal. fairly calm and collected people to oneʹs that tend to be quite "nervous." Neurotic people are more anxious. depressed. guilt feeling, low self-esteem. tense. irrational, shy, moody and emotional. Extroversion is characterized by being outgoing, talkative, high on positive affect (feeling good). active, lively. sociable. easy going, carefree, dominant and in need of external stimulation. Extroverts, according to Eysenckʹs theory, are chronically under-aroused and bored and are therefore in need of external stimulation to bring them up to an optimal level of performance. Introverts. on the other hand. are chronically over-aroused and edgy and are therefore in need of peace and quiet to bring them up to an optimal level of performance. They are calm, even-tempered, reliable, controlled, peaceful, thoughtful, careful, and passive. Evidence is presented for both the usefulness of the theoretical framework and the validity of the MeInerney and Sinclairʹs theory of Motivation in analyzing motivational variables for individuals from different cultural groups in educational settings. Mcinerney and Sinclairʹs Inventory of School Motivation (ISM) was used to determine which of the eleven motivation constructs were most salient for the college students in this study, and what if any differences were indicated between males and females, and between students in different field of studies. Since, there exists little research on motivation and personality factors among varied college students which has taken into account certain demographic aspects of college students with respect to their areas of studies in Iran, this research was carried out. Research questions The research questions to be answered were as follows: • Were there any significant differences regarding personality traits between girls and boys across the three colleges; engineering. social sciences, and medicine. • Were there any significant differences regarding motivational variables between boys and girls across the three colleges; cngmcenng, social sciences, and medicine. Method Two questionnaires, Eysenck Personality Inventory (Adult, 1975) and Inventory of School Motivation (1990) were administered to 344 (16R female and 176 male), fourth year college students of Shiraz University. Cluster sampling method was used for selecting the subjects. Two-way ANOYA was used for the comparison among six subsamples. Results The analyses of data showed that: a. There was a significant difference between social and engineering college students in neurotic type. Social college students scored higher than engineering students. b. No significant difference was found among college students in extroversion type. c. There was a significant difference among social, medical and engineering college students in motivation. Engineering students scored lower than social and medical students. Results also illustrated that there is a gender effect regarding intrinsic motivation in favor of engineering and medical students. Conclusions In general, results indicated that extroversion, compared to introversion was a prevalent trait of personality among all groups of students. These results were in congruent with the competitive educational system in Iran (Noori, Mokri, Mohammadi-Far, & Yazdani, 1381). Social science students were more nervous compared to other students .This also might be due to the nature of social sciences that imposes no hope on students to have an appropriate job opportunity in their future, which in tum would deteriorate the academic moti vation of students in the current situation. With respect to motivational factors findings indicated that five factors including social solidarity, task involvement, striving for excellence, power and self reliance, out of eleven factors, were significantly different across different fields of study. Comparing boys and girls showed that girls outperform boys regarding self esteem variable. With respect to intrinsic motivation, boys of colleges of engineering and medicine got higher grade than human sciences however, the reverse of the results was true for the boys of the human sciences. Educational implications as well as applications were suggested in the article.