Job Preferences for Social Medicine and Health care Management PhD Students in China: A Discrete Choice Experiment

Abstract

Background: The shortage of public health workforce and its uneven distribution between developed and underdeveloped areas still exist in China’s health system. This study aimed to investigate PhD students majoring in social medicine and health care management (SMHCM)’s stated preferences when choosing a job, so as to inform policy-makers regarding alternative interventions to address recruitment and retention problems at underdeveloped areas.Methods: The relative importance of 7 job attributes was assessed by conducting a web-based discrete choice experiment (DCE) survey on a sample of 193 SMHCM PhD students at different grades during October 20 and November 12, 2020. The 7 attributes were monthly income, location, housing, children’s education, working environment, career promotion and Bianzhi (which refers to the authorized number of personnel (the number of established posts) in a party or government administrative organ). Results: All 7 attributes were statistically significant with the expected sign and demonstrated the existence of preference heterogeneity. Monthly income, location and Bianzhi were of most concern for SMHCM PhD students when deciding their future jobs. Among the presented attributes, working environment was of least concern. For the sub-group analysis, the job in first-tier city was more likely to lead to a higher utility value for PhD students who were women, married, coming from urban area and has high annual family income. Compared with female PhD students, male PhD students were willing to pay more for a shorter time to get promoted.Conclusions: Both monetary and non-monetary attributes were found to be significantly influential in affecting PhD students’ preferences for choosing a job. Wider use of choice experiments can help improve the recruitment and retention of health workforce at disease control system, especially in third-tier cities where resource constraints preclude the use of all strategies.