Study On Psychosocial Factors Of Goal-setting And Statistical Techniques Of The Goal-Structure Construction In Clinical Undergraduates

Objective To investigate the contents, responsive intensities and psychosocial factors of the goals set by the medical freshmen and juniors in a medical university in coastal area. On that basis, the paper further discusses the statistical techniques of the goal-structure construction.Methods Research was conducted in two phases with two different groups in grade one and grade three.Team was considered to be a unit and cluster randomized sampling was applied to select all the subjects. In phase one, 194 students of grade one and 198 students of grade three were sampled. The participants completed a questionnaire survey about the goals they want to accomplish during the five-year college life.The goals cited by no less than 5% of the participated students in the same grade were considered highly frequent goals and made into cards. The factors related to these highly frequent goals were analyzed. In phase two, anther 112 students of grade one and 114 students of grade three were selected to categorize the goals set by group one using an individual measurement method. The classification was based on the inherent relevance of these highly frequent goals. The times of two goals being classified into the same group were calculated as these two goals'similarity measurement, based on which a triangular matrix was build to reflect the degree of affinity between the two goals. Factor analysis and systematic cluster analysis were then used to analyze this matrix and obtain the average intensity of each cluster.Results For grade one and grade three students, 46 and 48 goals with high frequency were selected respectively. To some extent, the contents and responsive intensities of the goals are affected by factors such as grade, sex, age, the post in class, number of children in family, and family economic situation.The goal-structure constructed by factor analysis and systematic cluster analysis method can be characterized by 11 basic clusters, four middle-level clusters and two high-level clusters in both grades.Conclusion⑴The contents of the goals set by medical freshmen and juniors are basically consistent with that of current goals of medical student training in China. The main problems existing in goal-setting are as follows: insufficient emphasis on the cultivation of professional ethics, more emphasis on the academic scores than the professional skills, failure to fully understand the skills of goal-setting.⑵The goal-structure is in a relatively stable status among the grade one and grade three clinical undergraduates.⑶The combination of factor analysis method and systematic cluster analysis method can overcome their disadvantages when applied independently and have achieved a good application on the study on goal-structure. The flexible average method is most applicable in the 11 different kinds of systematic cluster methods.