Association between Sociodemographic Characteristics and Big Five Personality Traits of Undergraduate Medical Students in Pakistan: A Cross Sectional Analytical Study

Abstract

Objective: To analyze the relation between the three sociodemographic, characteristics gender birth order and class year characteristics on big five personality traits of medical students.
 Study Design: Cross-sectional analytical study.
 Place and Duration of Study: Study was conducted at Army Medical College, Rawalpindi Pakistan, from Jan to Jul 2022.
 Methodology: The study included undergraduate medical students from first through final year belonging to an age group of 17-25 years and were willing to fill in the questionnaire through convenience sampling technique. Sample size as calculated by WHO calculator was 350
 Results: Mean age of the participants was 21.14±1.20 years. Males were 73.4% and 26.6% were females. Majority were between age group “21-23 years”, n=281(74%), “middle born”, n=154(40%) and in “third year”, n=138(36) and “fourth year”,n=147(39%). There was a significant association between gender, birth order, age group and class year and attributes related to “conscientiousness(p=0.01), “neuroticism” (p=0.01); “extraversion “and openness to experience.
 Conclusion: Results of this study revealed that big five personality traits were strongly associated with self-reported attributes of Conscientiousness, openness to experience, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism, Specifically, gender was associated with attributes of conscientiousness Birth order was associated with attributes of neuroticism and extraversion agreeableness had relatively strong associations with empathic concern and the class year was significantly associated with all Big five personality trait attributes assessed in the study.