Características pessoais de alunos de um curso de graduação em Medicina participantes e não participantes de um programa de Iniciação Científica. Personal characteristics of students in a graduate course in Medicine in participating and not participating in a program of Scientific Initiation.

Identify and compare the personal, academic, cultural and psychological profile of undergaduated students of medical course at Fluminense Federal University. Methods: Questionnaire was administered with questions relating to personal characteristics to students of the 9 th to the 12 th time in the course of graduation, during the 1 st and 2 nd semester of 2007 and the 1 st semester of 2008. At random were selected one hundred students, divided into two groups of fifty students: the group of those who studied at least two periods of the discipline of Scientific Initiation, that performed a research project (group IC) and those who had made no period or only the 1 st period of discipline, that was theoretical (group Non-IC) Results: On the sociability degree, curiosity, organization, decision-making, leadership, vision on the importance of science, degree of self-confidence, punctuality and commitment, there was no statistically significant differences between the two groups. The non-IC group had higher number of male (p=0.0434). The way to act: group-IC demonstrated act with greater pragma- tism (p=0.0492); the same with place where to inhabit, IC more collectively and the non-IC alone (p=0.0046); and we had a tendency, that were not significant, of making decisions collectively for the IC and individualistic for the non-IC (p=0.0559). Conclusion: The non-IC group is more pragmatic, that more decisions on a individualistic basis and prefer inhabit alone.