Factors affecting medical students' selection of an internal medicine residency program.

Objective: To determine factors that influence medical student selection of internal medicine residency programs by ethnicity and gender.

Design/setting: A cross-sectional mailed survey of graduating medical students applying to four residency programs in 1999.

Measurements: A five-point (5=most important) Likert scale was used to evaluate factors and included 14 items on location characteristics, 20 on program features, six on recruitment, three on future plans and three on advising.