Dental Student Lifestyle: Do choices correlate to academic performance?

Dental students make choices pertaining to time allocation, study habits and lifestyle; however, the relationship of these choices to academic performance remains largely unexplored. Objective: To examine the relationship between lifestyle choices of dental students and their academic performance as reflected by class rank and National Dental Board Exam Part I (NBDE) scores.

Methods: UCLA dental students from first through fourth year classes received a voluntary IRB- approved 41 question survey. Participants consented to release their coded academic information. Data were analyzed by regression and Pearson correlation.

Results: Responses were received from 78% 2nd years; 63% from 3rd years and 39% from 4th year students. Key findings: there were no significant correlations between sleep, exercise, alcohol consumption, and academic performance variables. In contrast, motivational factors showed high to moderate correlation with academic performance. The importance students place on grades correlates with class rank (0.63) and student desire to specialize correlates with NBDE1 scores (0.43). There was a negative correlation (-0.44) between research involvement and desire to specialize.

Lifestyle choices changed when students prepared for exams: Sleep decreased from an average of 6.5 hours/night to 4.9 hours/night; excessive snack food consumption increased from 7% of respondents to 39%; students exercising <1/week increased from 44% to 83%.

Nearly 3/4 of dental students did not contact teachers outside of class with questions about course material. The more class students missed, the more likely they were to cram for finals (0.56). There was a low correlation between boards scores and percentage of time spent studying in groups (0.09). Desire to specialize and importance placed on grades had a low correlation (0.10).

Conclusion: Academic performance of UCLA dental students, as measured by class rank and NBDE scores, is not related to lifestyle choices. However, there are motivational factors that do correlate with academic performance.