Advances in medical diagnosis and therapeutics walk hand in hand with scientific development in other disciplines like biochemistry, pharmacology or physics, as future medical care depends on today’s scientific research [1, 2]. More and more, physicians are called to assume a central role in the scientific research/patient care partnership. They are increasingly expected to communicate with researchers and convey clinical and translational research findings to patients and to the general public. Moreover, they are required to contribute actively to the pursuit of new knowledge, bringing clinical needs into research and taking research findings into clinical practice [3, 4].

However, available data point to a decrease in the numbers of physician-scientists[5–7]. Amongst the reasons for such decline are less financial incentives, a large emphasis on clinical practice during undergraduate medical training, and insufficient or inadequate exposure to research prior to the choice of a professional pathway [8–10].

The reasons why and when physicians choose careers in academic medicine have been explored and evidence has been found connecting graduate and postgraduate research [11]: (a) participating in research methodology courses and more positive attitudes towards science and scientific research in medicine [12, 13]; (b) participating in required research experiences and publishing research reports [14, 15] or participating in postgraduate research [16]; (c) engaging in intensive research experiences and receiving a faculty appointment with research responsibility [17] and (d) publishing research as an undergraduate medical student and/or pursuing an MD/PhD and choosing academic medicine [5, 18–20]. Evidence also shows that engagement in undergraduate extra-curricular scientific activity results in a higher rate of publication after graduation [21].

Medical schools can provide undergraduate students with opportunities to engage in research and thus have an important role in nurturing the interests and in developing the research skills of future physicians. Previous studies show that limitations in time, lack of mentors, insufficient training in research methodologies, and a perception that the undergraduate student’s research work is not properly recognized are amongst the factors that discourage medical students from pursuing undergraduate research activities [9, 22].

Research in Higher Education has revealed that undergraduates’ career choices, attitudes, values, and future behaviors are deeply influenced by what students do during college [23, 24] and that individual variables, like gender or parental education, are associated with undergraduate students’ engagement in extra-curricular activities [23, 25]. Also, personality traits have been shown to have predictive validity regarding outcomes like behavior [26], academic performance in medical students [27–29] and medical specialty choice [30–32]. Surprisingly, the influence of undergraduate medical students’ individual characteristics on their involvement in research activities has not deserved attention. Current literature on student engagement in scientific research focuses on programs and how they can contribute to the pipeline for physician scientists. Identifying the individual variables that mediate this behavior is important to understand how engagement in research can be enhanced.

Our aim in this study was to assess the influence of individual characteristics, including personality traits and socio-demographic characteristics, on voluntary engagement in scientific research of undergraduate medical students.

Collectively, our results show that three out of the Big Five dimensions of personality (openness to experience, conscientiousness, and extraversion), gender, and GPA have a unique and statistically significant contribution to students’ involvement in undergraduate scientific research activities.

To the best of our knowledge this is the first study to consider the contribution of student’s individual characteristics to engagement in undergraduate scientific research activities. Also, this study takes into consideration a student’s actual research participation behavior, rather than future intentions of participation or positive attitudes towards research and science [12, 13].

Although the associations observed were statistically significant, they were modest, which is not surprising given the complexity of human behavior. That is, other individual and contextual factors might influence student’s engagement (e.g. students’ autonomy levels or availability of role models amongst the faculty). In fact, previous studies determined that personality variables usually account for about 14% of the variance in behavior [26]. Our model, by adding other individual characteristics to personality traits, explained 33% of the variance, thus adding an important dimension to the understanding of complex decision-making behaviors.

Personality predicts behavior to the extent that it can influence the psychological state of an individual and predispose him to action. Considering that “open individuals” are characterized as being intellectually curious, creative, and more adaptable to novel situations, their higher involvement is congruent with the type of work and intellectual curiosity demanded by scientific research. Motivation, persistence, careful planning, and the ability to delay gratification are important traits for this activity and are common to individuals with high conscientiousness scores; thus, it is not surprising that both openness and conscientiousness positively influence students’ participation. In contrast, “extroverted individuals” tend to value more socially stimulating activities and are less likely to concentrate on demanding cognitive tasks, which is likely to explain a smaller involvement of highly extroverted individuals [36].

Higher GPA was linked to greater engagement in research. One of the reasons underlying this relation might be that students with higher GPAs could be more confident in their ability to use their transferable skills (for example, communication skills and time management) to tackle the demands that come with scientific research participation.

Also, results showed that male students are more likely to be involved in research. Gender imbalances in engagement have been reported [22] and might be caused by cultural and social factors that keep women from participating (for example, lower levels of autonomy and unavailability of female role models) or by different self-perceptions of competence between males and females. In fact, a study by Burgoyne et al. [37] demonstrated that male students felt significantly more competent in transferable and research-specific skills and biological statistics. It is also possible that female students are more focused on academic performance and prefer to invest their time and efforts in what they perceive to be more curriculum-related activities. Interestingly, the categorization of two sub-samples according to the type of involvement (elective curricular or extra-curricular), revealed the proportion of women engaged in scientific research in extra-curricular settings was even lower. However, this proportion increased if we only considered the female students with lower “conscientiousness” scores, suggesting that female students might be more focused on curricular performance.

Besides finding the effect of individual characteristics on undergraduate scientific research activities engagement, we found that some of these dimensions (gender, conscientiousness, openness, and GPA) are also related to the type of extra-curricular involvement students choose, which further strengthens our findings. Interestingly, parents’ education was also a factor that influenced student engagement in extra-curricular undergraduate scientific research activities. In fact, for males, being a “first generation student” seems to have an impact on the type of involvement they choose to have. Available data from other studies points in different directions: first generation students were found to have lower educational aspirations and to be less involved in campus activities [38]. However, these studies were not done with medical students and it is quite possible that the very demanding selection process for medical school admission might be selecting first generation students for whom their family’s educational background is not relevant for their educational attainment. Also, changes in the Portuguese educational, social, and economic reality in the past two decades might mean new career opportunities for first generation students, encouraging them, and their families, to invest in different activities that can contribute to their professional success.

If one assumes that student engagement in research is a positive behavior that should be encouraged, taking student characteristics into consideration might result in more targeted efforts of recruitment and hold greater promise in contributing to the sustainability of the physician-scientist career pipeline.

Our results showed that male students are two times more likely to participate in research activities than females. Students with higher GPA and higher scores of openness and conscientiousness are also more likely to engage in research activities. On the contrary, higher scores in extraversion decrease the likelihood of participation. Other personality dimensions like neuroticism and agreeableness have no predictive power over students’ engagement in research.

Our findings also add some insight on student’s characteristics related to student’s participation in extracurricular research activities, showing that male, 1st generation students are more involved and that female participation in ECA is related to lower levels of conscientiousness.

The longitudinal study was sponsored by a grant from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology - project PTDC/ESC/65116/2006.