Prosocial modelling matters: the association between parent and faculty involvement in fighting COVID-19 with medical students’ career commitment

Figures & data

Table 1. Summary statistics for medical students in the study (n = 99,559).

Variables	Participants, N (%)	Nationally, %
Gender
Female	60,815 (61.08)	59.36^a
Male	38,744 (38.92)	40.64^a
Academic performance
Bottom 25%	6,320 (6.35)
50%–75%	21,112 (21.20)
25%–50%	35,687 (35.85)
Top 25%	36,440 (36.60)
Region
Eastern	38,134 (38.30)	31.20^a
Central	41,341 (41.53)	32.94^a
Western	20,084 (20.17)	35.86^a
Area (home location)
Rural	41,538 (41.72)	46.02^a
Urban	58,021 (58.28)	53.98^a
Learning phase
General education	14,774 (14.84)
Basic medical education	43,026 (43.22)
Clinical medical education	30,869 (31.00)
Clerkship rotation	10,890 (10.94)
Willingness to become a doctor before the pandemic.
No	13,637 (13.70)
Yes	85,922 (86.30)

^aData Source: 2020 China Medical Student Survey (CMSS), conducted by the National Centre for Health Professionals Education Development (NCHPED), authorized by the Ministry of Education (MOE) and National Health Commission (NHC) [4].

Table 2. The relationship between role models and medical students’ intention to become doctors.

	The COVID-19 pandemic has enhanced my commitment to be a doctor
	No n = 28,689(%)	Yes n = 70,870(%)	Chi-square
	(28.82)	(71.18)
Have an acquaintance who has participated in anti-pandemic activities			151.5***
No	10,449 (31.30)	22,930 (68.70)
Yes	18,240 (27.56)	47,940 (72.44)
Parents are doctors			30.2***
Neither involvement	814 (33.18)	1,639 (66.82)
Faculty involvement	1,103 (27.71)	2,877 (72.29)
Parents involvement	298 (30.28)	686 (69.72)
Both faculty and parents’ involvement	752 (27.00)	2,033 (73.00)
Parents are not doctors			137.6***
Neither involvement	9,635 (31.16)	21,291 (68.84)
Faculty involvement	15,281 (27.61)	40,058 (72.39)
Parents involvement	233 (29.05)	569 (70.95)
Both faculty and parents involvement	573 (25.02)	1,717 (74.98)

***p < .001.

Table 3. Hierarchical regression results (n = 99,559).

Variables	Step 1	Step 2	Step 3	Step 4	95% Confidence Interval, %
Participation (base: neither & parents are not doctors)
Neither involvement & Parents doctors	0.911*	0.888*	0.868**	0.864**	0.788–0.948
Faculty involvement & Parents doctors	1.186***	1.160***	1.177***	1.165***	1.078–1.259
Faculty involvement & Parents not doctors	1.180***	1.119**	1.245***	1.236***	1.196–1.277
Parents involvement & Parents doctors	1.042	0.998	0.984	0.97	0.839–1.122
Parents involvement & Parents not doctors	1.105	1.096	1.084	1.093	0.929–1.286
Both involvement & Parents doctors	1.223***	1.147**	1.201***	1.180***	1.077–1.294
Both involvement & Parents not doctors	1.356***	1.324***	1.402***	1.388***	1.252–1.539
Key independent variable
Wanted to become a doctor before the pandemic		5.465***	5.509***	5.397***	5.192–5.609
Demographics
Male			1.029	1.060***	1.029–1.092
Urban			0.993	0.989	0.960–1.019
Region (base: eastern)
Central			1.183***	1.171***	1.134–1.210
Western			0.971	0.967	0.930–1.006
Learning phase (base: general education)
Basic medical education			0.848***	0.852***	0.814–0.892
Clinical medical education			0.600***	0.622***	0.593–0.652
Clerkship rotation			0.503***	0.528***	0.499–0.560
Academic performance (base: bottom 25%)
50%-75%				1.191***	1.119–1.267
25%-50%				1.341***	1.263–1.423
Top 25%				1.535***	1.445–1.630

‘Neither’ means neither parents nor faculty. ‘&’ indicates that two conditions are met at the same time. For example, ‘Faculty involvement & parents are doctors’ means that faculty participated in the pandemic and students’ parents are also doctors. Robust standard errors are clustered at the college level. ***p < .001, **p < .01, *p < .05.

Table 4. Comparison of the faculty participation and parent participation when parents are doctors (n = 4,964).

Variables	Faculty involvement	Parents involvement
Prior career commitment
Did not want to become a doctor	0.894	0.733
Wanted to become a doctor	1.219***	1.015
Gender
Female	1.052	0.991
Male	1.323***	0.955
Learning phase
General education	1.199	1.304
Basic medical education	1.108	0.880
Clinical medical education	1.132	0.896
Clerkship rotation	1.333	1.430
Region
Eastern	1.183*	1.015
Central	1.133*	0.897
Western	1.213	1.049

Each row represents a logistic model. We only show the OR values of the participation of parents and faculty when the medical students’ parents were doctors. The logistic model: medical students’ intention = log (xi | V = 1), xi includes group, whether students wanted to be doctors before the pandemic, gender, academic performance, learning phase, home location, and region of college. V is the value of the variables. For example, if v = female, OR (Faculty & parents doctors) = 1.052, OR (Parents & parents doctors) = 0.991. Robust standard errors are clustered at the college level.

***p < .001, **p < .01, *p < .05.

NCHPED. China medical student survey (CMSS) report; 2020. Published 2020; [cited 2021 Apr 20]. Available from:https://medu.bjmu.edu.cn/cms/show.action?code=publish_4028801e6bb6cf11016be526c0dc0014&siteid=100000&newsid=50947b6c789248b39fca817dfb9ba3ee&channelid=0000000008.

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Data availability statement

The data used in this study are not publicly available due to confidentiality reasons. Data supporting the results of this study can be obtained from the author, Prof. Hongbin Wu.