A De Novo Tool to Measure the Preclinical Learning Climate of Medical Faculties in Turkey

Abstract

Although several scales are used to measure general and clinical learning climates, there are no scales that assess the preclinical learning climate. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to develop an effective measurement tool in order to assess the preclinical learning climate. In this cross-sectional study, data were collected from 3,540 preclinical medical students of six medical faculties in Turkey. The methodology included the following activities: generate an item pool, receive expert opinions, perform a pretest to purify the instrument, and conduct factor and reliability analyses. According to the factor analysis, eight factors were determined and their contribution to the variance was 50.39%. In addition, the item factor loadings ranged from .31 to .91, Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the subscales ranged from .72 to .77, and the item-total correlation coefficients for the subscales ranged from .44 to .76. All the items significantly discriminated between the lowand high-performing students (t = 99.57; p = .01). The scale included 52 items with the following subscales: management, teaching, teaching staff, institutional commitment, emotions, inter-student relationships, physical environment, and motivation. The analysis of this newly developed Preclinical Learning Climate Scale (PLCS) indicated that its psychometric properties are appropriate and this scale can be employed to evaluate medical education programs.