Psychometric Properties of the Persian Questionnaire for Evaluation of Clinical Teaching at Outpatient Settings

Abstract

Purpose

To assess the validity and reliability of the Persian Outpatient Clinical Teaching Evaluation (OCTE) questionnaire, in order to evaluate clinical teaching for undergraduate medical students.

Methods

This was a methodological study conducted in Tabriz University of Medical Sciences in 2018. To assess the validity of the questionnaire, ten academic staff who had received master’s degrees in medical education were chosen by convenience sampling. The first draft of the Persian questionnaire was derived from the Ministry of Health’s clinical teaching standards booklet. The questionnaire consisted of just 15 obligatory items in the first draft of the questionnaire. Subsequently, the questionnaire was modified to be used in teaching outpatient clinics. Content validity indices were calculated. Subsequently, the modified questionnaires were given to 92 academic staff in Imam-Reza Hospital’s outpatient clinics. We applied principle component analysis (PCA) and Varimax rotation for exploratory factor analysis (EFA). In order to confirm the EFA, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used. Cronbach’s alpha method, the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) and test–retest reliability were used to assess the reliability.

Results

The overall content validity ratio (CVR), content validity index (CVI), and impact score (IS) were 0.78, 0.79, and 3.26, respectively. Out of 92 academic staff, 85 participated. The Keizer-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy for data was 0.726 (p-value=0.0001). After the EFA, the 10-item questionnaire loaded on three factors. The internal consistency of the questionnaire was established by Cronbach’s alpha of 0.89 and the ICC was 0.94. Furthermore, there was a strong correlation with a 2-week retest interval.

Conclusion

The study demonstrated that the Persian clinical teaching questionnaire had optimal psychometric properties. Thus, application of this questionnaire at outpatient settings can be helpful.

Keywords:

• validity
• reliability
• education
• medical
• undergraduate
• evaluation

Acknowledgments

The present study was a dissertation by the first author for obtaining a master degree in medical education which was approved by Tabriz University of Medical Sciences in 2018 and was conducted in the Medical Education Research Center. We appreciate the considerable contributions by the academic staff at Tabriz University of Medical Sciences.

Author Contributions

All authors made substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; took part in drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; gave final approval of the version to be published; and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Disclosure

The authors report that they have no conflicts of interest.