The Career Choice of First-Year Occupational Therapy Students: a Follow-Up Study

The increase in the number of occupational therapists to be educated (Department of Health [DH] 2000a, 2000b, 2002) has focused attention on student recruitment, especially because there has been a decrease in the number of applicants for occupational therapy courses (College of Occupational Therapists 2002a). A study of 330 first-year students at Brunel University between 1996 and 1999 (Craik et al 2001) provided baseline data of how the students had discovered and investigated occupational therapy and established the factors that influenced the students’ choice of career and of university. A subsequent national recruitment study by the College of Occupational Therapists (2002b) provided further information which supported many of these findings. Establishing trends over a period of years provides additional information and may indicate changes in the profile of students. It may also indicate responses to previous recruitment strategies and guide future recruitment activity. This study aimed to gather data on a further cohort of first-year students at Brunel University to increase the existing database of student profiles, to compare the results with the previous study and to explore possible trends.