Background: One’s motivations to study medicine as a career might play an important role in the performance of the future professional. Objective: To validate a motivation for choosing medicine scale in Latin American medical students. Methods: We carried out a cross-sectional multi-centered study including a sample of medical students from eight Spanish-speaking countries. Using a previously adapted Spanish scale and previous qualitative research, an initial 24- ítem Likert-like scale was generated, and subjects’ comprehension of this scale was tested in a pilot study. We calculated item-test correlation. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) using principal component analysis with oblimin rotation and Kaiser Normalization was performed. Statistical determination of the number of factors was based on the Kaiser criterion, the Cattell scree plot and an explained variance of 5%. Assignme...