The value of the California Psychological Inventory in predicting medical students'' career choice

Much of the research in medical education has focused on the prediction of medical students' future career choices. This longitudinal study evaluates the effectiveness of the California Psychological Inventory (CPI) in predicting career choices of students attending the University of Maryland School of Medicine. While results did reveal some significant and consistent differences between career choice groups, these differences were not of the magnitude to allow discrimination among all specialty groups. There is no evidence to support the hypothesis that career choice can be predicted from CPI data. It was concluded that future research into career choice prediction should focus on variables other than personality characteristics as measured by the CPI or similar tests.