Capacity for wonder among medical students: Assessment and educational implications

Abstract

Objective

The capacity for wonder (CfW) is a personal disposition related to lifelong learning and moral character development, two highly valued characteristics of health professionals. We previously developed and validated a CfW measure among college students. Here we describe how the scale performs among medical students.

Methods

We invited all students at a top-tier U.S. medical school (N = 477) to participate in an online survey including the CfW measure, year in medical school, and demographics. We performed confirmatory factor analysis on the CfW measure and reassessed its reliability.

Results

276 students completed the survey for an overall response rate of 58%. Factor analysis resulted in a 10-item scale with an alpha of 0.79 and an eigen value of 3.57. Factor loadings ranged from 0.43 to 0.77. The mean total score was 39.3 (SD = 8.9) out of a possible high score of 60. Total scores varied by year in school with significantly lower scores among 2nd year students (32.9 vs. 41.5; p < 0.001).

Conclusion

We confirmed the reliability of a 10-item CfW scale in 4 cohorts of medical students. Results suggest that the 2nd year of medical school poses the greatest risk to students’ capacity for wonder. Efforts should be made to understand this phenomenon and develop interventions to mitigate it. Future research should explore the validity of the CfW scale, its utility in evaluating interventions designed to cultivate the capacity for wonder, its applicability to other groups of health professionals, and its association with ethical decision-making and practice.

Keywords:

• Psychometrics
• education environment
• ethics/attitudes
• medical education research
• undergraduate

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the students who responded to our survey. We also appreciate the support of the Office of Curriculum, the Office of Student Affairs, and the Office of Assessment and Evaluation at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Glossary

Wonder: A feeling of radical appreciation for a triggering event, typically accompanied by a behavior of pausing to reflect and a motivation to reorient one’s self-understanding and sense of the world.

Capacity for wonder: A personal disposition to experience wonder consistently on fitting occasions

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gail Geller

Gail Geller, ScD, MHS, Berman Institute of Bioethics, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.

Seonho Shin

Seonho Shin, PhD, Cambrium Assessment, Washington, DC.

Harry Goldberg

Harry Goldberg, PhD, School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.

Maria W. Merritt

Maria W. Merritt, PhD, Berman Institute of Bioethics, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.