Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the state of career and employment among dental hygiene students in an attempt to get an accurate grip on their preparation for career and employment. And it's also meant to help improve the efficiency of guidance by dental hygiene education institutions for career and employment. The subjects in this study were every dental hygiene student at three different colleges. After a self-administered survey was conducted, the following findings were given: 1. In regard to the future prospects of dental hygienist, 44.2 percent of the students investigated believed that there would be a bright future for dental hygienist, and 55.8 percent didn't agree to that or considered the prospects to be neither bright nor bleak. 2. As to the motivation of choosing the department of dental hygiene, 51.2 percent thought that it was easy for dental hygienists to get a job, and 22.2 percent wanted to be a professional. 3. Concerning preference for workplace, they hoped to work in a hospital-sized or larger institutions including dental hospitals. As to the reason why they wanted a job, 76.2 percent had their sight set on standing on their own feet. 4. As for the top priority for employment, they took interpersonal relationship into account the most(3.63), followed by aptitude(3.52) and working conditions/environments(3.51). 5. In terms of job values by academic year, all the freshmen, sophomores and juniors attached the most importance to interpersonal relationship. By academic standing in the previous semester, the students who got an A, B or C put more value on human relations, and those who got a D gave more weight to social status and fame. The gap between them was statistically significant. As for the impact of the high schools they graduated from, they took the most statistically significant consideration on interpersonal relationship irrespective of their alma mater.
