Correlation of Personality Traits & GPA for Jordanian Medical Students

Objectives: To investigate the relation between personality traits and academic performance of medical students and evaluate if correlations between personality traits and examination scores are affected by gender or year of study.

Methods: A sample of 307 medical students, at the Hashemite University, Jordan completed an online questionnaire to identify Big Five Model personality traits. Grade Point Average (GPA) scores were retrieved from the University database and data analysed using SPSS 16.0.

Results: Correlation between personality traits and GPA score was investigated using Pearson coefficient. Only Conscientiousness had a significant positive correlation (r = .231, p < .001). Two-way ANOVA testing investigated the effect of gender, personality trait, and the interaction between them on GPA. Only Conscientiousness had a statistically significant effect on GPA (P = .001) and there was no significant effect of gender or its interaction with personality traits on GPA. Investigating the interaction between year of study and personality traits, there was only a statistically significant interaction effect between year of study and Openness (F (1, n=307) = 10.297, P =.001) on GPA.