Impact of gender and race-ethnicity on reasons for pursuing a career in veterinary medicine and career aspirations

Amass, Sandra F.; Davis, Kauline S. Cipriani; Salisbury, Shari; Weisman, James L

doi:10.2460/javma.238.11.1435

Cited by 23 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…The breadth and factorial pattern of the motivations included in the final derived instrument generally support the motivational taxonomy and conclusions of the precursor exploratory study by Cake et al ,9 namely that there are multiple strong motivations for veterinary work including, but clearly not limited to, early vocational identity and affinity for animals. This only partially supports the predominant view from earlier literature that the major veterinary career motivations are a strong sense of vocational identity1–6 developed alongside a love of animals 1–4 7. While vocational identity was indeed found to be correlated with animal orientation and endorsed as a career motivation by a large subset, identity-based motivations were rejected by over a quarter of respondents and rated significantly lower by younger and recently graduated veterinarians.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 57%

Challenging identity: development of a measure of veterinary career motivations

et al. 2020

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BackgroundWhile little is known about the motivations underpinning veterinary work, previous literature has suggested that the main influences on veterinary career choice are early/formative exposure to animals or veterinary role models. The aim of this study was to develop and provisionally validate a veterinary career motivations questionnaire to assess the strength of various types of career motivations in graduating and experienced veterinarians.MethodsA cross-sectional sample of experienced veterinarians (n=305) and a smaller cohort of newly graduated veterinarians (n=53) were surveyed online using a long-form questionnaire. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to iteratively derive a final, short-form questionnaire for survey of a second cross-sectional sample of experienced veterinarians (n=751).ResultsEFA derived a final questionnaire with 22 items loading onto six factors (social purpose, animal orientation, vocational identity, challenge and learning, career affordances, and people orientation). While motivations based on animal orientation were predictably strong, those based on vocational identity were not universal and were weaker in younger and graduate veterinarians; both of these motivations were rated lower by male veterinarians. Motivations based on challenge and learning emerged as some of the strongest, most universal and most influential; people orientation and social purpose were also important, particularly for older veterinarians.ConclusionThe major motivations for pursuing a veterinary career may best be represented as an intrinsic passion for animal care and for learning through solving varied challenges. These motivations are largely intrinsically oriented and autonomously regulated, thus likely to be supportive of work satisfaction and wellbeing.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 57%

Challenging identity: development of a measure of veterinary career motivations

et al. 2020

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“…There has been some exploration of the reasons why students choose veterinary science as a career . Major reasons appear to be contact with and an interest in animals at a young age and an adult role model.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collation of data on applicants, offers, acceptances, students and graduates in veterinary science in Australia 2001–2013

Smyth¹

2016

Aust Veterinary J

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“…They want to work with or help animals. Incidentally, while there is some research exploring why potential veterinarians choose their degrees (71,72), there is less work exploring this in other animal-related professions although the "sense of calling" seems to be important here too (73). In animal welfare education we must guard against a passive message that grades are more important than this initial passion for the subject.…”

Section: Hidden Curriculummentioning

confidence: 99%

Discipline-Based Education Research for Animal Welfare Science

MacKay

2020

Front. Vet. Sci.

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Animal welfare science features interdisciplinary and collaborative working across fields, spanning behavioural ecology, psychology, veterinary sciences, economics, and fundamental biology. However, education research is not yet prevalent within the animal welfare literature. In a Web of Science topic search there were 188 papers which specifically discussed or explored how to teach animal welfare from 1978 to 2017. Of these, only 34% (n = 61) specifically focused on instructional design or pedagogical research, and these were predominantly within veterinary education (57%). Despite this, the literature is in broad agreement that animal welfare education is an important topic that should be done well. Within the UK, there were a possible 586 animal-related courses within Universities College Admissions Service database for potential students to choose from, highlighting the significance of robust and considered educational practice. The current gaps identified in the literature were discussion of hidden curriculums outside of veterinary degrees, animal-centered education, the blueprinting of assessment, and authentic assessment. Therefore, this review proposes that animal welfare scientists interested in education consider discipline based educational research (DBER) practices, and engage more fully with the educational research literature. A key component of DBER is the recognition that specialist knowledge needs to be taught by specialists, and so it is important that animal welfare scientists begin to access educational research too.

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Impact of gender and race-ethnicity on reasons for pursuing a career in veterinary medicine and career aspirations

Cited by 23 publications

References 18 publications

Challenging identity: development of a measure of veterinary career motivations

Challenging identity: development of a measure of veterinary career motivations

Collation of data on applicants, offers, acceptances, students and graduates in veterinary science in Australia 2001–2013

Discipline-Based Education Research for Animal Welfare Science

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